Klam won awards, acclaim, and a spot on The New Yorker’s “Twenty Best Fiction Writers in America under 40” list for Sam the Cat, his nervy, ironic debut collection of seven long stories. Coming sixteen years later, his first novel is a richly evocative study of passion and family as well as a sharply satirical look at today’s mass-consumer society. Unfolding during an artists’ conference at a seaside getaway, the story focuses on Rich and Amy, a cartoonist and student of narrative painting, respectively, as they meet again after a fling the previous summer to see what happens next. In Klam’s telling, what happens is painful and funny, compelling and unsettling.

Klam is in conversation with Jake Tapper, Chief Washington Correspondent for CNN.

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