LITERATURE / Sonic Literary Experience
Beginning Middle End
Fragments from a Sonic Novel
Award-winning Mexican writer Valeria Luiselli and sound designer Charles de Montebello present Luiselli’s new novel Beginning Middle End as a sonic experience. Together, they recorded underwater sounds, winds, volcanic eruptions, rainstorms, church bells, fish markets, and other sounds across Sicily and the Aeolian Islands. These sounds serve to accompany and thread through the narrative like a chorus made not from human voices, but from the elements. The goal is simple: for reader-listeners to fully immerse themselves and feel anchored in time and space through sound.
This event is presented in collaboration with The Center for Fiction.
Event Information
Date: Thursday, November 19, 2026
Time: 7:30 pm
Venue: Center for Fiction
Address: 15 Lafayette Ave, Brooklyn, NY 11217
Tickets: RSVP Coming Soon
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About Valeria Luiselli:
Valeria Luiselli is an acclaimed writer of both fiction and nonfiction. She is the author of the essay collection Sidewalks; the novels Faces in the Crowd and The Story of My Teeth; and, most recently, Tell Me How It Ends: An Essay in Forty Questions and the international bestseller Lost Children Archive. She is the recipient of a MacArthur “Genius Grant,” and the winner of two Los Angeles Times Book Prizes, an American Book Award, the Folio Prize, and the 2021 International Dublin Literary Award. Her work has been translated into more than thirty languages. She lives in New York City.
About Charles de Montebello:
Charles is a native New Yorker with more than 25 years of audio experience. He is a two-time Grammy Award Winner and has been honored to work with some of the biggest names in the industry, including Stephen Colbert, Frances McDormand, Samuel L. Jackson, Will Patton, Amy Poehler, Robert De Niro, Anthony Bourdain, Jon Stewart, and Michelle Williams.
After graduating from NYU with a degree in Sound Engineering, Charles knew he wanted to create a recording environment where clients could feel both inspired and at home. In 1998, he founded CDM Sound Studios. Although the studio has continued to grow – Charles has never lost sight of his commitment to making every client feel welcome and valued.
About the book Beginning Middle End:
Beginning Middle End follows a mother and daughter on a road trip after the collapse of a marriage, beginning in Sicily during a summer of shifting winds, volcanic rumbles, and sudden storms. How do you begin again, the mother wonders, if you got the beginning wrong? The journey becomes a search for origins—reaching back through family history, language, and generations, and further still into myth and geology. As her daughter comes into her own and her mother shows signs of dementia, the narrator confronts some of life’s most essential questions: how stories shape a child’s imagination, how we root ourselves in the world while accepting our own transience, and what happens to a family’s memories when they begin to disappear.
