Porter Square Books: Boston Edition and GrubStreet are delighted to present the latest installment of the Grubbie Debut event series, featuring Lesley Mahoney O'Connell! Join us for a celebration of her new book, Ripple Effects. Ron MacLean will join O'Connell in conversation.

We are pleased to offer a virtual attendance option for this event via Crowdcast!

This event is co-presented by GrubStreet and Porter Square Books

In eleven carefully crafted stories, Lesley Mahoney O'Connell's landscapes and seascapes help readers to recognize and to appreciate the compromises made by her characters, and to feel their strengths and flaws as they navigate the sometimes turbulent or turgid waters of their lives. Most of the stories are set in New England coastal villages. All are sensitive and thought-provoking, the characters relatable and real.

Ripple Effects features mostly quiet but intelligent characters who see themselves as outsiders in their own worlds. O’Connell lets readers listen as they work their way toward decisions they can somehow live with. Some swim through currents of parental self-centeredness; others, lacking ordinary filters, dream impossible dreams as they ignore career crises and marital ennui. O’Connell is especially good at exploring the interior lives, the caves and cliffs carved by deep losses, creating empathy and often a sense of peace in readers.

Lesley Mahoney O'Connell’s debut book, Ripple Effects, is a collection of 11 stories. Her fiction has appeared in Post Road, Psychopomp, and Solstice. Her prose has been featured in Contrary Magazine, Edible Boston, and various publications. She has taken numerous classes at GrubStreet, including the Short Story Incubator with Ron MacLean. Her essays and stories have been featured in Contrary Magazine, Edible Boston, and more. She works in health care development communications, marketing, and digital strategy, and lives in Marshfield, Massachusetts, with her husband and son.

Ron MacLean is author of the story collections Apocalypso (forthcoming 2026), We Might as Well Light Something On Fire and Why the Long Face? and the novels Blue Winnetka Skies and Headlong. MacLean’s fiction has appeared widely in magazines including GQ, Narrative, Fiction International, and elsewhere. He is a recipient of the Frederick Exley Award for Short Fiction and a multiple Pushcart Prize nominee.

Celebrating over 25 years as the nation's leading and largest independent center for creative writing, GrubStreet is the place where writers develop their craft – and themselves – through the power of writing and sharing their work. GrubStreet offers hundreds of creative writing programs and events for writers from all backgrounds and ages at its Center for Creative Writing in the Seaport, in many Boston neighborhoods, and online. Scholarships are available for all offerings, and many programs are free. At its center, GrubStreet also hosts a community lounge, a podcast studio, Porter Square Books: Boston Edition, and a Writers’ Stage. Learn more at www.grubstreet.org.

Grubbie Debut: Lesley Mahoney O'Connell, author of Ripple Effects, in conversation with Ron MacLean