Griffinbay Author Event at Tops’l Sushi Bar

Nicole Hardy Presents Her Memoir “Confessions of a Latter Day Virgin” at Tops’l Sushi Bar Sunday evening, October 20, 5:00 pm

Don’t miss this special occasion, a book talk co-sponsored by Tops’l Sushi Bar and Griffin Bay Bookstore to be held at Tops’l Sushi Bar in honor of Nicole Hardy and her just-released memoir, Confessions of a Latter-Day Virgin. You find Tops’l Sushi Bar upstairs at Front Street & Spring Street.

“Sex isn’t everything,” Nicole Hardy’s mother tells her in the opening lines of her memoir, Confessions of a Latter-Day Virgin. Most adults would agree. But what if, even as an adult, your religion requires you remain celibate until marriage? What if the longer you remain celibate and single, the less likely you are to find a mate within that religion, where most marry young and remain married forever? And what if the life your religion requires of you—children, marriage, domesticity—is not the life you envision for yourself?

In her funny, intimate, and thoughtful memoir, Nicole Hardy explores how she came, at the age of thirty-five, to a crossroads regarding her faith and her identity. As a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Nicole held an absolute conviction in her Mormon faith during her childhood and throughout her twenties. But as she aged out of the Church’s “singles ward” and entered her thirties, she struggled to merge the adventurous life she envisioned for herself with the one the church prescribed, where all women are called to be mothers and the role of homemaker is the emphatic ideal.

Confessions of a Latter-Day Virgin chronicles the extraordinary lengths Nicole undertook in an attempt to reconcile her very human needs with her spiritual life, including flying across the country and sailing the high seas to meet men she found on LDSsingles.com, taking salsa classes to meet her need for physical contact, and even moving to Grand Cayman, where the ocean provided some peace and solace. Yet neither these secular pursuits nor LDS guidance could help Nicole prepare for the dilemma she would eventually face: a crisis of faith that would cause her to question everything she had grown up believing.

Single, happily childless, and still a virgin at thirty-five, Nicole must grapple with the agonizing decision to trade her traditions and her spiritual center for a chance at life and love free from stifling cultural expectations. In the tradition of the memoirs Devotion and Mennonite in a Little Black Dress, Confessions of a Latter-Day Virgin is a mesmerizing and wholly relatable account of one woman’s hard-won mission to find love, acceptance, and happiness—on her own terms.

About the Author
Nicole Hardy’s memoir Confessions of a Latter-day Virgin was inspired by her essay, “Single, Female, Mormon, Alone,” published in the New York Times and selected as a “notable essay” in 2012’s Best American series. Nominated for a Pushcart Prize, Hardy is also the author of two poetry collections: This Blonde and Mud Flap Girl’s XX Guide to Facial Profiling.

What Others Are Saying
“What is it like to be a devout Mormon woman in today’s world? Poet and essayist Nicole Hardy first opined on the matter in her New York Times column “Modern Love,” in which she laid bare her personal struggles to be true to both her heart and her faith. In this achingly candid memoir, Hardy delves more deeply into the dilemmas faced as she aged out of the church’s ‘singles ward’ and into her thirties.” —ALA Booklist

“I’ve never been a Mormon and can scarcely remember being a virgin. Why, I wonder, couldn’t I put this book down? Was it Nicole Hardy’s fearless honesty? Her disarmingly funny voice? Maybe it’s just this: Nicole Hardy has an astonishing story to tell, and she tells it with pure audacity.” —Claire Dederer, bestselling author of Poser

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