Tonight we celebrate two new releases by local author Margaret Hawkins (A Year of Cats and Dogs). In her novel How to Survive a Natural Disaster, Hawkins uses multiple points of view to make astute observations about family dynamics; with unflinching honesty and dark humor she chronicles the unraveling of a dysfunctional family. In her memoir How We Got Barb Back, Hawkins recalls, with hard-earned wisdom, humor, and compassion, her struggle to bring her once vivacious and talented older sister back from the depths of severe, long-untreated mental illness. Hawkins teaches writing at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago and has been an art critic for the Chicago Sun-Times for more than two decades.