Join us on Wednesday, October 22 for an evening of reading and discussion to celebrate We Loved To Run by Stephanie Reents. She will be joined by Martha Conway and Keith Ekiss!

About the book

A fearless debut novel about a women’s cross country team and how far girls will push themselves to control their bodies, friendships, and futures

“This novel is a wild, brave run through the dark, and the ending might stir you to tears.”—Eric Puchner, New York Times bestselling author of Dream State

We loved running because it was who we were, who we’d been in high school, who we hoped to be in futures we couldn’t yet imagine. Strong and fast. Fast and strong.

At Frost, a small liberal arts college in Massachusetts, the runners on the women’s cross country team have their sights set on the 1992 New England Division Three Championships and will push themselves through every punishing workout and skipped meal to achieve their goal. But Kristin, the team’s star, is hiding a secret about what happened over the summer, and her unpredictable behavior jeopardizes the girls’ chance to win. Team Captain Danielle is convinced she can restore Kristin’s confidence, even if it means burying her own past. As the final meet approaches, Kristin, Danielle, and the rest of the girls must transcend their individual circumstances and run the race as a team.

Told from the perspective of the six fastest team members, We Loved to Run deftly illuminates the intensity of female friendship and desire and the nearly impossible standards young women sometimes set for themselves. With startling honesty and boundless empathy, Stephanie Reents reveals how girls—even those in competition—find ways to love one another and turn feelings of powerlessness into shared strength and self-determination.

About the authors

Stephanie Reents is the author of The Kissing List, a collection of stories that was an Editors’ Choice in The New York Times Book Review, and I Meant to Kill Ye, a bibliomemoir chronicling her journey into the strange void at the heart of Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian. She has twice received an O. Henry Prize for her short fiction. Reents received a BA from Amherst College, where she ran on the cross country team all four years; a BA from the University of Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar; and an MFA from the University of Arizona. She was a Stegner Fellow at Stanford University.

Martha Conway is the author of several novels, including The Underground River, which was a New York Times Book Editor’s Choice. Her short fiction has been published in The Iowa Review, Folio,The Carolina Quarterly, and other journals, and she is a recipient of a California Arts Council fellowship. Martha lives in San Francisco and teaches creative writing for Stanford’s Continuing Studies Program. Her latest novel is The Physician’s Daughter.

Keith Ekiss is the author of two collections of poetry — Burial Fragments, co-winner of the Barry Spacks Poetry Prize for 2024 from Gunpowder Press — and Pima Road Notebook (New Issues Poetry & Prose, 2010), a book about growing up on the edge of the Salt River Pima-Maricopa Indian Community in Arizona. As a translator, his works include The Fire’s Journey (Tavern Books, 2019), an epic poem by the Costa Rican writer Eunice Odio in four volumes and Territory of Dawn: The Selected Poems of Eunice Odio, published in 2016 by The Bitter Oleander Press. He has been a lecturer in the Creative Writing program at Stanford since 2007.

About the bookstore

The Booksmith is an independent bookstore located in the Haight Ashbury neighborhood of San Francisco since 1976.

Please note:

• Check-in for the event will begin at 6:45pm.
• Priced ticket holders (Book+seat, Pay it Forward!+seat) will have seats held until 7pm. Arrivals after 7pm will be allowed admission, but seats are not guaranteed.
• General admission ticket holders will be offered seats at check-in on a first-come, first-served basis. May be standing room.
• Space at the door on the day of the event is usually available, but not guaranteed.
• Books will be for sale on the night of the event.
• ADA accessible. Bathrooms on site during event hours.
• Events typically end between 8:30 and 9pm.
• Questions? [email protected]