Family feud: Author depicts a 30-year long feud between grandmothers in new novel

Allegra Goodman’s newest novel depicts the trials and tribulations that come with family arguments in the form of connected short stories.

By Lillian Magurno, NYS Writers Institute intern

Thursday, February 5, 2026

Bestselling author Allegra Goodman will take the stage at the University at Albany’s Performing Arts Center on Wednesday, February 11, for a conversation with WAMC's Joe Donahue about her newly published novel, This Is Not About Us.

Goodman’s novel, which will be published February 10, follows the Rubinstein family and the decades-long rivalry between two grandmothers and their ongoing feud that begins, hilariously, with a disagreement over apple cake. The book expands on characters first introduced in Goodman’s short fiction, including “Deal-Breaker,” published in The New Yorker in January. Goodman has spent years developing this fictional family, and writing the novel allowed their stories “to blossom on their own on the page,” she said.

“One of the best parts of writing fiction is knowing your characters and then just allowing them to talk and riff with each other on the page. It’s like jazz improvisation. You set the parameters; you’ve got the theme—and then you get to explore,” Goodman told The New Yorker in an interview.

This Is Not About Us brings together interconnected stories like “Deal-Breaker” to illuminate the tensions, loyalties, and generational conflicts within an American Jewish family. Some characters are deeply involved in their Jewish community, while others keep their distance. Those family reflect the complexity Goodman observes in her own community.

“Some members of the family, like Helen, Heather, and Debra, are actively involved in their Jewish community. Others are not so interested. I wanted to explore how this plays out. It’s a delicate and complex situation, reflecting what I see in the American Jewish community,” Goodman said in the New Yorker interview.

The conversation with Allegra Goodman, free and open to the public and moderated by WAMC's Joe Donahue, will take place at 7:30 p.m. on Wednesday, February 11, in the University at Albany’s Performing Arts Center Recital.

Allegra Goodman

In conversation with WAMC's Joe Donahue

7:30 p.m. Wednesday, February 11

University at Albany

Recital Hall, Performing Arts Center

1400 Washington Avenue

Albany NY 12222

Free and open to the public.

Books will be available for sale.

A signing will follow the conversation.

For more information, visit https://www.nyswritersinstitute.org/allegragoodman or call 518-454-5620.

About the author

Allegra Goodman’s novels include The Chalk Artist, Intuition, The Cookbook Collector, Paradise Park, and Kaaterskill Falls (a National Book Award finalist). Her fiction has appeared in The New Yorker, Commentary, and Ploughshares and has been anthologized in The O. Henry Awards and Best American Short Stories. 

She has written two collections of short stories, The Family Markowitz and Total Immersion and a novel for younger readers, The Other Side of the Island. Her essays and reviews have appeared in The New York Times Book Review, The Wall Street Journal, The New Republic, The Boston Globe, The Jewish Review of Books, and The American Scholar. 

Raised in Honolulu, Goodman studied English and philosophy at Harvard and received a PhD in English literature from Stanford. She is the recipient of a Whiting Writer’s Award, the Salon Award for Fiction, and a fellowship from the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced study. She lives with her family in Cambridge, Massachusetts.