Author Kurt Andersen, The Breakup (2026), in conversation with Jim Kelly

A marriage cracks apart as a near-future United States redraws its borders in this penetrating and moving novel from the New York Times bestselling author of Fantasyland.

Natalie and Asher’s marriage has long been marked by fault lines, quiet rifts in how they view their fellow Americans and navigate AI-suffused life in 2045. After twenty-three years together, and after surviving the two years of civil war in the 2030s, Natalie is in rural Tennessee (part of the new Free American Republic) and Asher in San Francisco (in the now smaller United States). Natalie and Asher’s relationship mirrors America’s own unraveling—confused, messy, painful, ambivalent, and impossibly intimate.

When Natalie and Asher are brought back into proximity while touring far-flung colleges with their seventeen-year-old, they find themselves on a road trip through a strange, uncertain new American landscape, transformed by both the terrorist uprising and technology, all while dealing with the flux—and resilience—within their own family. They face the questions the nation has reckoned with for a generation: what differences are irreconcilable, and when is something broken worth saving?

Razor-sharp, ambitious, ranging from tragic to comic and brimming with imagination, The Breakup is a sweeping story where the personal and sociopolitical intersect in ways bracingly plausible, keenly insightful, and surprisingly hopeful.

Kurt Andersen is the author of the recent New York Times bestsellers Evil Geniuses and Fantasyland, as well as several bestselling novels, including You Can’t Spell America Without Me, Heyday, and Turn of the Century. With Steven Soderbergh, he co-created the dystopian comedy series Command Z. He co-founded Spy magazine and hosted the Peabody Award-winning public radio show and podcast Studio 360. A commentator on MSNOW and regular contributor to the New York Times and the Atlantic, he was previously editor-in-chief of New York and a columnist for the New Yorker. He grew up in Nebraska, graduated from Harvard, and lives in New York City with his wife, Anne Kreamer.

Andersen will be in conversation with Jim Kelly, former editor of Time magazine. Kelly’s career at Time began in 1978. He served as foreign editor during the first Gulf War and the fall of the Soviet Union, became deputy managing editor in 1996, and rose to the position of managing editor in 2001. During Kelly’s tenure  as managing editor (2001-2006), the magazine won five National Magazine awards, including Best Magazine of the Year, and sold the most copies in its history for its coverage of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. In 2006 Kelly became the first managing editor of Time Inc. Kelly splits his time between New York and Roxbury, CT. He currently serves as the books editor for the digital weekly publication Air Mail. 

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