Be Well: An Improvised Book Event

Love books? Love laughing? Cool, so does WIT alum and author Sarah Flocken.

She’ll be reading selected passages from her “joyfully nightmarish” debut novel Be Well, which came out this summer, and telling stories from the bonkers episodes in her real life that inspired her to write those scenes. A team of WIT improvisers will perform an Armando improv set based on these stories and book excerpts. Copies of Be Well will be available for purchase before and after the show, and Sarah will sign them for you if you ask nicely.

About the Book

Summer 2009: Brand-new college graduate Ann Ward has sent out nearly three hundred job applications, but nobody will employ her. The last thing she wants to do is leave Los Angeles, return to her desert hometown, and live in the shadow of her fame-hungry televangelist father–and it’s starting to look like that’s her fate. Thankfully, Ann’s luck turns after a humiliating failed job interview, when she meets the magnetic founder of upscale holistic wellness collective Sagebrush. She’s quickly drawn deep into the privileged, demanding world of Sagebrush, inventing Anneliese – a dubious new persona – to fit in.

But when her funds run out and her lies blow up, Ann must choose between facing reality or doing whatever she has to do in order to get the future she wants. Both a “funny ha-ha-” and a “funny oh no” read for anyone who survived the Great Recession, Be Well explores just how easy it is to believe in something unquestioningly–and lie to ourselves and others–when everything feels uncertain and the future isn’t guaranteed.

“Provides laugh-out-loud moments in an era known for its bleakness.”
—Publishers Weekly

“A joyfully nightmarish exploration of the places where belief and desperation meet. Funny, dark, and sharply observed.”
—Jessie Gaynor, author of The Glow

“Reading Be Well feels like living inside the world’s most devastatingly accurate Reductress headline. With razor-sharp humor and an uncanny eye for millennial absurdity, Sarah Flocken captures the particular cocktail of hope, humiliation, and existential dread that defined coming of age in 2009.”
—Candice Wuehle, author of Ultranatural and Monarch, an NPR Best Book of the Year

“Sarah Flocken’s debut novel brilliantly captures the chaos of what it’s like to be an unprepared college graduate desperate for a slice of solid ground in a ruthlessly shaky world.”
— Nicolas DiDomizio, author of A Murder Most Camp

About Sarah

Sarah Flocken is an author who writes unhinged fiction for the silently enraged. Be Well is her first novel. She is also a public relations professional, comedian, improviser, and pun contest host (yes, it’s a thing) with performance credits worldwide. Her long-form improv journey began at Washington Improv Theater in 2012, and WIT quickly became a cherished part of her life during her seven years in the District. DC will always hold a piece of her heart and blood pressure, but San Diego is the place she calls home. You can follow her on TikTok, Instagram, and Facebook at @sarahflockenwrites.

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