Store Events - May 23, 7:00 p.m.

Jabberwocky Bookshop is pleased to welcome NEW YORKER contributor and author Elizabeth Kendall for a reading from her wholly original memoir, AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A WARDROBE.

In the wardrobe's own savvy, vibrant voice, we first meet B., the wardrobe's owner, as a child in the buttoned-up Midwest of the 1950s, when "a vision of a saddle shoe" comes into her head and she discovers the urgency of all clothing dreams. We follow B. through her awkward, pudgy stage ("Here I must write about the stomach…"); the indignity of camp shorts; her "adult figure arriv[ing] suddenly in 1963." The 1960s bring even bigger changes when B. goes off to Harvard, discards her girdle, and discovers... Marimekko! Miniskirts! Bell-bottoms! Elizabeth Kendall's wardrobe charts the most important events in B.'s life and the outfits she assembles for each. We watch as B. copes with the untimely death of her mother; makes a go of magazine work--and glamour--in New York; and, after the inevitable false starts and wrong moves (including, of course, in her choice of clothing), finally comes into her own.

Part memoir, part fashion and cultural history of the last five decades, AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A WARDROBE is an exploration of the clothes each generation has embraced, the smallest details in which we are able to seek comfort and meaning, and the places and things--sometimes odd or unexpected--in which we store our memories.

Catherine Stimpson, Dean of the Graduate School of Arts and Science, New York University, raves, "A writer of deep and delicious gifts, Elizabeth Kendall now gives us a subtle, original riff on the clothes we wear. Clothes may not make the man or woman, but they certainly make this book. It is at once whimsical and profound." And Linda Nochlin, author of BATHER, BODIES, BEAUTIES, hails AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A WARDROBE as, "…a book to devour with great pleasure…Kendall has given us something wonderful."

Elizabeth Kendall is the author of WHERE SHE DANCES, THE RUNAWAY BRIDE, and AMERICAN DAUGHTER, and her work has appeared in THE NEW YORKER and THE NEW YORK TIMES. In 2004-2005 she was a fellow at the Cullman Center of the New York Public Library, and in 2006 she received a Fulbright grant to do research in St. Petersburg, Russia. She lives in New York City.