Joseph Fink & Meg Bashwiner in Conversation With Symphony Sanders

The First Ten Years: Two Sides of the Same Love Story (Harper Perennial) is the sometimes hilarious, occasionally heartbreaking, and always entertaining joint memoir by Joseph Fink, cocreator of Welcome to Night Vale, and his wife, writer and performer Meg Bashwiner, chronicling the first 10 years of their relationship from both sides. In 2009, 22-year-old Joseph, newly arrived to New York City from the West Coast, was juggling odd jobs to pay the rent and volunteering with a theater company in the East Village so he could snag free tickets to their shows. Meg, a 22-year-old aspiring performer and playwright, was living with her parents in New Jersey, working a desk job and commuting to her internship with that same East Village theater company. Joseph’s and Meg’s stories meet when they both find themselves selling tickets in a cramped box office. They quickly became friends. Within a year, they were a couple. Within five years they were touring the world, performing on some of the world’s greatest and not-so-great stages. In their candid, soul-baring memoir, Joseph and Meg recount their first 10 years together, each telling their story as they remember it, without having consulted the other. We hear both sides of their first kiss, first breakup, first getting back together, the death of a father, marriage, international fame, world tours, mental illness, and discussions about having children. Sometimes, they recall things differently — neither agrees on who paid for the morning-after pill on their first date. Sometimes they remember the exact same details in the same way — but still have their own narrative on just what those details mean. Bashwiner and Fink will be joined in conversation by Symphony Sanders, actor, voice of Welcome to Night Vale‘s Tamika Flynn, and co-host of the Good Morning Night Vale podcast.

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