The buzz is all over town: Renowned director (and dad to Jake and Maggie) Stephen Gyllenhaal is here filming Grassroots, starring Joel David Moore and Jason Biggs. It’s based on Zioncheck for President, Phil Campbell’s half-mordant, half-confessional account of getting sacked by The Stranger and managing monorail champion Grant Cogswell’s quixotic 2001 race for Seattle City Council. Tonight, Campbell (who now lives in Brooklyn) is also in town, to read from his forthcoming second book, Memphis del Mar, as part of the Sorrento Hotel’s Penthouse Symposium series. It’s a novel with a premise as improbable and intriguing as the idea of a major motion picture about a city council race revolving around transit technology. Campbell calls it a “global warming satire”: The seas rise, the Delta floods, the South secedes again—how does Memphis cope?

“I’m interested in the obsession Americans have with the post-apocalypse," explains Campbell. "It’s everywhere”—from video games to Cormac McCarthy.

The chapter he’ll read tonight is an imagined “sermon from a Baptist minister on global warming," inspired by a powerful megachurchman Campbell observed when he worked as a reporter in Memphis. “It’s out there.”

Charles Mudede, who has not been sacked by The Stranger, will introduce Campbell. It’s free, with limited seating. Doors open at 6:30.