FAMILY CONFLICT

Allegra Goodman

7:30 p.m. Wednesday, February 11, 2026

University at Albany

Recital Hall, Performing Arts Center

1400 Washington Avenue

Albany NY 12222 -  See map.​

Allegra Goodman, major contemporary fiction writer, is the author of the new novel, This Is Not About Us (February, 2026), a kaleidoscopic portrait of a modern family torn apart by a senseless fight between two grandmothers, Sylvia and Helen Rubinstein, about apple cake.

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Goodman is also the author of the national bestseller, Isola (paperback, December, 2025), about a young noblewoman and her lover marooned on an island — as a penalty for forbidden love — in the Gulf of St. Lawrence in the 16th century. Based a real historical incident, Isola was named a “Best Book of the Year” by TIME magazine and The Washington Post.

Her other works include the National Book Award finalist Kaaterskill Falls (1998), The Chalk Artist (2017), The Cookbook Collector (2010), Intuition (2006), Sam (2003), Paradise Park (2001), The Other Side of the Island (2008), short fiction collections The Family Markowitz (1997), and Total Immersion (1998), and the non-fiction Speaking of Writing: A Brief Rhetoric.

Praise for This Is Not About Us 

“Full of wit and spark . . . Irresistible and arresting.”— The New York Times Book Review

“Goodman’s nimble language, usually displayed in her characters’ sharp readings of one another, is one of the great pleasures of her writing. The other is her ability to integrate serious metaphysical questions into her entertaining comedies of manners.”—Maureen Corrigan, Fresh Air

“I can't think of anyone else who manages that precarious tone so well, balanced with Zenlike tranquillity between genuine mirth and heartfelt despair. She describes modern life . . . without a drop of bitterness. . . . Goodman is a fantastically fluid writer, and yet for all her skill, she’s a humble, transparent one who stays out of the way, never drawing attention to her style or cleverness.”—Ron Charles, The Washington Post

“Every character . . . is endowed by their creator with the fullest complements of flaws, tics, vices, strengths, virtues and moments of nobility. . . . Goodman presides over her universe with a light and sometimes funny touch.” —Geraldine Brooks, The Washington Post

“Like a modern-day Jane Austen, Goodman is a splendid observer of personalities, their interactions and hidden doubts. Her special gift is examining human nature, its weaknesses and its strengths, through a narrow lens.”— USA Today

“These characters and the situations they find themselves in are so authentic and familiar, we respond to them as though they are family. They get under our skin, make us roll our eyes, get us snorting with laughter and recognition.”

—The Boston Globe

“Allegra Goodman is brilliant, funny, knowing, alive: a marvel.”—Cynthia Ozick