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David Starkey’s first novel, Poor Ghost, was published by Turner/Keylight in 2024. He is a former Santa Barbara poet laureate and emeritus professor at Santa Barbara City College, where he was founding director of the creative writing program. A graduate of LSU’s MFA program and a regular contributor to The Southern Review, he is the author of Creative Writing: Four Genres in Brief, which for many years has been the bestselling textbook for introductory college creative writing classes.


Schedule

9:30 am to 10:30 am
A.Z. Young Park, Author Tent B
Hit the Road: Modern Literary Odysseys
David Starkey, The Fairley Brothers in Japan
James Wade, Narrow the Road: A Novel
with moderator Chris Tusa

10:45 am to 11:30 am
Cavalier House Books Tent
Book Signing


The Fairley Brothers in Japan

From the author of Poor Ghost comes a poignant road trip novel following two middle-aged brothers, Chris and Andy Fairley, as they attempt an unlikely musical comeback in Japan.

Chris and Andy Fairley couldn’t be more opposite—Chris, an uptight, ever-pessimist, and Andy, a go-with-the-flow hopeful. Their glory days seemed long behind them since their moderate success as a folk-rock duo and their relationship with each other fizzled out in the mid-1980s. But when their hit song is unexpectedly chosen for a Japanese car commercial, the men are given one last shot to revive their fame and friendship.

They embark on a tour across Japan, but soon find their venues are far from glamorous: a wedding reception where they're asked to play their hit on repeat, a flower farm gift shop, a windy sculpture park, and a restaurant where customers catch their own fish. As tensions between the brothers rise and a strange reporter begins following them all around the country, the men aren’t sure if the band or their relationship will survive. With echoes of Andrew Sean Greer’s Less, The Fairley Brothers in Japan is a gently comic exploration of aging, family, and belonging. It’s a tale of two brothers, not just hitting the road, but rediscovering themselves along the way.