Presented in partnership with the Wisconsin Book Festival
The kitchen is “the heart of the home,” or at least it’s supposed to be. But wait! What’s that lurking under the sink? Behind the cabinets? In the back of the refrigerator?! When Roz Chast and Jason Adam Katzenstein confessed to each other that their kitchens were far from Martha Stewart perfect, they knew they couldn’t be the only ones cracking under the pressure of their pressure cookers. In The Two Saddest Kitchens, Roz and Jason combine their hilarious cartoon sensibilities to take stock of everything from tragic pantries to the secret double life of Mr. Clean.
Chast and Katzenstein take readers on a comedic tour of sad kitchens, from “malevolent microwaves and ominous ovens” and “demonic dishwashers and deadly drains” to “painful pantries, cruddy cabinets, and dysfunctional drawers” and much, much more! Everything culinary is fair game. As they warn in the disclaimer that opens the book, “Quite a few refrigerators, cabinets, pots, pans, coffee makers, sinks, Tupperware containers, microwave burritos, dishwashers, pressure cookers, mugs, knives, teas, and lines of T.S. Eliot have been harmed in the making of this book.” Their sacrifices are our gain as we vicariously enjoy watching them ponder the fancy utensils that will never be used, the recipes that will never be followed, and the dream kitchens that exist only on the astral plane, which is maybe for the best. While The Two Saddest Kitchens is both for people who loves kitchens and cooking OR suffer from kitchen anxiety, it is especially for those who worry that they might be a disaster in the kitchen.
Readers like Roz—“I used to think I couldn’t follow instructions because I was left-handed, but now I think maybe I’m just a chowderhead” or like Jason who delights “in the warm embrace of ordering in a meal I could quite easily make myself”—will relate!
Copies of The Two Saddest Kitchens will be distributed for free to all attendees courtesy of the Conney Project and the Wisconsin Book Festival.
About Roz Chast
Roz Chast‘s cartoons began appearing in the New Yorker in 1978. She is the author of the graphic memoirs Can’t We Talk About Something More Pleasant?, a #1 New York Times bestseller (100 weeks), a National Book Critics Circle Award and Kirkus Prize winner and finalist for the National Book Award; national bestseller I Must Be Dreaming; Going Into Town (Winner of the New York City Book Award); What I Hate: From A to Z; and her cartoon collections The Party, After You Left and Theories of Everything, among others. She was awarded the Harvey Hall of Fame Award, and in 2024 was awarded the National Humanities Medal. She lives in Connecticut and New York.
About Jason Adam Katzenstein
Jason Adam Katzenstein is a cartoonist and comedy writer whose work has appeared in the New Yorker, the New York Times, and MAD Magazine. He is the author and illustrator of the graphic memoir Everything Is an Emergency. He lives in New York.
About Erika Meitner
Erika Meitner is the author of six books of poems, including Ideal Cities (Harper Perennial, 2010)—a 2009 National Poetry Series winner; Holy Moly Carry Me (BOA Editions, 2018), winner of the 2018 National Jewish Book Award and a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award in poetry; and Useful Junk (BOA Editions, 2022). Her poems have been published most recently in The New Yorker, Electric Literature, Virginia Quarterly Review, Oxford American, The New Republic, Orion, and elsewhere. Her seventh book, Assembled Audience, is due out from Milkweed Editions in September 2026. Meitner is currently a professor of English at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where she also directs the Creative Writing Program.