[photo credit: City of Pasadena]
Miranda Cowley Heller — who spent nearly a decade as senior vice president and head of drama series at HBO before writing the debut novel that became a #1 New York Times bestseller — will discuss What the Deep Water Knows, her first collection of poetry, in a virtual author talk from 11 a.m. to noon. The event is free, open to anyone who registers online, and falls in April 2026, which the Academy of American Poets marks as the 30th anniversary year of National Poetry Month. The Pasadena Public Library is presenting it as part of the library’s observance of that month.
The collection is a departure in form, if not in landscape. According to the publisher, it moves through childhood, marriage, motherhood, and loss — in language the publisher describes as “at once bold and lyrical, affecting and devastatingly frank.” Many of the poems are set on Cape Cod, where Heller grew up spending summers. So was The Paper Palace, the 2021 novel that sold in 30 international editions, according to biographical records, and was selected for Reese’s Book Club. That book told its story across 24 hours and five decades in prose. Poetry offers something narrower. More compressed. Less room to explain.
Heller’s path to both forms runs through Southern California. She moved to Los Angeles in 1997, and the city shaped what came next. She had been accepted to a doctoral program in art history at UCLA before her career at HBO took shape instead — a decade overseeing some of the most celebrated drama in American television history. After leaving television, she returned to the writing she had long deferred. The result was The Paper Palace. What the Deep Water Knows is what came after that.
Author Daisy Goodwin, writing as an endorser of the collection, called it “a breathtaking collection” that maps “a woman’s life with extraordinary precision and skill.” Author Jenny Jackson, whose novel Pineapple Street Goodwin’s blurb appeared alongside, described the work as “raw and intimate” and “surprising and captivating,” according to the publisher.
The event is free. Attendees may submit questions for Heller as part of the talk. The Pasadena Public Library is the sponsoring organization; for information, call (626) 744-4066.
To attend: Register at https://libraryc.org/pasadenalibrary/147484. Wednesday, April 22, 11 a.m. to noon, online only.
She spent years in a room deciding what television audiences were ready to feel. Now the question she’s asking is smaller and more personal — the kind you can only ask in a poem, in the space of a few lines, set against a landscape of cold water and the lives that accumulate at its edge.
AUTHOR TALK: MIRANDA COWLEY HELLER — WHAT THE DEEP WATER KNOWS Date & Time: Wednesday, April 22, 2026 at 11:00 a.m. – 12:00 p.m. | Venue: Online (Virtual) | Phone Number: 626-744-4066 | Website: https://www.cityofpasadena.net/library/?trumbaEmbed=view%3Devent%26eventid%3D196435740
