MARGARET WAPPLER READS FROM HER DEBUT NOVEL NEON GREEN WITH GUY BRANUM

Neon Green (Unnamed Press)

It's the summer of 1994 in suburban Chicago: Forrest Gump is in theaters, teens are reeling from the death of Kurt Cobain, and you can enter a sweepstakes for a spaceship from Jupiter to land in your backyard. Welcome to Margaret Wappler's slightly altered 90s. Everything's pretty much the way you remember it, except for the aliens.

When a flying saucer lands in the Allens' backyard, family patriarch and environmental activist Ernest is up in arms. According to the company facilitating the visits, the spaceship is 100 percent non-toxic, but as Ernest's panic increases, so do his questions: What are the effects of longterm exposure to the saucer and why is it really here? 

The family starts logging the spaceship’s daily fits and starts but it doesn't get them any closer to figuring out the spaceship's comically erratic behavior. Ernest’s wife Cynthia and their children, Alison and Gabe, are less concerned with the saucer, and more worried about their father’s growing paranoia (not to mention their mundane, suburban existences). Set before the arrival of the internet, Neon Green will stun, unnerve, and charm readers with its loving depiction of a suburban family living on the cusp of the future.

Praise for Neon Green

“Part historical novel, part alternative history, Neon Green captures the suburban-American experience at the cusp of the Internet Age, and asks its readers to consider what unites—and what threatens—a family. Strange yet accessible, goofy yet also, somehow, heartbreaking, a debut to be reckoned with.”— Edan Lepucki

"Deeply moving, unsentimentally nostalgic, surreal, and hilarious, Wappler’s alternate 1990s unravels the curiosities and sufferings that reveal our character and transform our souls." —J. Ryan Stradal

"Neon Green is an extraordinary, inventive literary triumph. Evoking the imaginative pleasures of Lydia Davis, Aimee Bender, and Don DeLillo, Neon Green depicts family life, environmentalism, marriage, illness, and spaceships with ingenuity and sophistication." — Joe Meno

Margaret Wappler has written about the arts and pop culture for the Los Angeles Times, Rolling Stone, Elle, Cosmo, New York Times, and several other publications. Neon Green is her first novel. She lives in Los Angeles and can be heard weekly on the pop culture podcast, Pop Rocket.

Guy Branum is a writer and comedian best known for serving as “Staff Homosexual” on Chelsea Lately and his performance as Natalie Portman’s sassy gay friend in No Strings Attached. Noticing a trend? He’s appeared on E!, MTV, G4, CurrentTV and lots of other channels you’d need to upgrade your cable to watch. He’s written for Punk’d on MTV and Fashion Police on E!. That means he’s watched the Grammys at Joan Rivers’s house. Jealous? Guy also writes for the “Gay Voices” section of The Huffington Post and occasionally makes web vidoes where he dances around without his shirt on. But mostly, Guy is very, very beautiful and good at having sex.