John Darnielle (Devil House) in conversation with author and musician G’Ra Asim

Mountain Goats’ singer-songwriter John Darnielle will be in conversation with author and musician G’Ra Asim, assistant professor of English, Washington University.

Gage Chandler is descended from kings. That’s what his mother always told him. Years later, he is a true crime writer, with one grisly success and a movie adaptation to his name, along with a series of subsequent less notable efforts. But now he is being offered the chance for the big break: to move into the house where a pair of briefly notorious murders occurred, apparently the work of disaffected teens during the Satanic Panic of the 1980s. Chandler finds himself in Milpitas, California, a small town whose name rings a bell — his closest childhood friend lived there, once upon a time. He begins his research with diligence and enthusiasm, but soon the story leads him into a puzzle he never expected — back into his own work and what it means, back to the very core of what he does and who he is.

Darnielle’s first novel, Wolf in White Van, was a New York Times best-seller, National Book Award nominee and a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for first fiction, and widely hailed as one of the best novels of the year. Left Bank Books.