Join us for a conversation between author Peter Godwin and New York Times Travel editor, Amy Virshup, celebrating the release of Godwin's new book, Exit Wounds: A Story of Love, Loss, and Occasional Wars (2025).

A reception with refreshments and book sales and signing will follow the presentation.

Registration is required for this event. Please scroll all the way down and click the registration button. Events at the library are free and open to the public.

Copies of EXIT WOUNDS will be available for purchase at the event and can also be purchased in advance at Oblong Books in Millerton, NY, and Lakeville Books in Lakeville, CT.

About the book

Peter Godwin’s mother is ill. Born to an English upper class that prized learning and service, she had chosen a life in Zimbabwe, where she worked for decades as a doctor, and -- with Peter's father -- raised a family. Fading physically, she is undiminished in spirit and formidable in her leveling wit.

Peter, traveling back and forth between his mother in London and his own family in New York, reflects on his childhood in Zimbabwe, his conscription into the army, his years as a war journalist, and his illustrious and defiant forebears. Meanwhile, the magnitude of fatherhood and the dislocation of living in America erode his identity as an intrepid reporter; his wife’s professional advancement strains their marriage; and his mother’s deathbed confessions expose secrets that shatter his sense of his own past.

A bullet, Godwin explains, often leaves little mark on its way in but shreds the body past mending on its way out. In this searing, lyrical, humor-laden, and luminous memoir, Godwin probes his own exit wounds of exile, expired love, statelessness, and bruising family truths with unflinching candor and grace.

What the critics are saying

"This is an exceptional memoir, its stories told with such immediacy that the reader lives Godwin’s days with him." — Caroline Moorehead, Times Literary Supplement

“Eloquent…beautiful…. Mr. Godwin writes about his ma with affection and careful detail. Gentle humor is ever-present.” 
— Tunku Varadarajan, Wall Street Journal

“Often absurdly funny…. Godwin has experienced enough loss to know that humor and grief can, and should, occupy the same space.”
— Dina Gachman, the New York Times

“Elegiac….Godwin contends with his wounds through reflection, humor, and quiet resolve.”
— The New Criterion

“Exit Wounds is riveting, heart-rending and borderless in its brilliance and sympathy.”
— Joseph O’Neill, author of Godwin

“This profound and moving memoir is an essential addition to Peter Godwin’s brilliant oeuvre: he explores how we carry our imaginary homelands through loss and upheaval, how we make and remake our vulnerable selves. I loved this book.”
— Claire Messud, New York Times bestselling author of The Burning Girl

Peter Godwin was born and raised in Zimbabwe. He is the author of six nonfiction books including Mukiwa, which received the George Orwell Prize and the Esquire-Apple-Waterstones award, and When a Crocodile Eats the Sun, which won the Borders Original Voices Award. His book, The Fear, was selected by The New Yorker as a best book of the year. He has taught writing at Wesleyan and Columbia and served as President of the PEN American Center. He is an Orwell fellow and a Guggenheim fellow. He lives in New York City. Follow him on Instagram @PeterGodw1n and on Facebook.

Amy Virshup has been an editor and frequent writer at the Times since 2003 and has been the Times Travel editor since 2018. She has helped shape Times coverage for two decades, starting as an editor of the Escapes section then moving on to Culture, first as Books editor and then as deputy editor. She then ran the Sunday Metropolitan section and later became deputy Metro editor. An intrepid traveler, she lives in NYC and in Salisbury, where she has spent summers since childhood swimming at the Grove.

Registration is required for this free event. Please scroll down and click the registration button. Thanks!