About the books:
BIG OF YOU: In these nine stories, Elise Levine illuminates the aspirations of women and men (and one sassy millennia-old being) as they sift through the midden of their regrets, friendships, and marriages, and seek fresher ways of inhabiting older selves.
At turns playful, blistering, unabashed, these stories examine the nuanced, kaleidoscopic dimensions of character, of people driven by ambition yet contending with the hauntings of the past. Spanning various settings and time periods, Big of You captures the everyday and the extraordinary in collisions soaring and earthy, exuberant and visceral.
A SILENT TREATMENT: Jeannie Vanasco’s mother starts using the silent treatment not long after moving into the renovated apartment within Jeannie’s home. The silences begin at any perceived slight. Her shortest period of silence lasts two weeks. Her longest, six months. As Vanasco guides us through her mother’s childhood, their shared past, and the devastating silence of their present, she paints a layered, complicated portrait of a mother and daughter looking, failing, and—in big and small ways—succeeding to understand each other. In the margins of her research, at her kitchen table with her partner, in phone calls to friends, and in delightful hey google queries, Vanasco explores the loneliness and isolation of silence as punishment, both in her own life and beyond it, and confronts her greatest fear: that her mother will never speak to her again.
About the authors:
Elise Levine is the author, most recently, of the story collections Big of You and This Wicked Tongue, Say This: Two Novellas, and the novel Blue Field. Her work has appeared in Ploughshares, Copper Nickel, Blackbird, The Walrus, and five times in Best Canadian Stories. She lives in Baltimore, where she teaches in the MA in Writing program at Johns Hopkins University.
Jeannie Vanasco is the author of the memoirs Things We Didn’t Talk About When I Was a Girl and The Glass Eye. Born and raised in Sandusky, Ohio, she lives in Baltimore and is an associate professor of English at Towson University.
Elise and Jeannie will be in conversation with Philip Dean Walker.
Philip Dean Walker is the author of AT DANCETERIA AND OTHER STORIES (Squares & Rebels, 2016) which was named a Kirkus Reviews Best Book of 2017, received from them a *starred review, and was chosen by Kirkus Reviews editors as a semi-finalist for the 2017 Kirkus Review for Fiction. His second collection of stories, READ BY STRANGERS, was published by Lethe Press in April 2018 and was named a Kirkus Reviews Best Book of 2018 and also received a *starred review. His latest collection of stories, BETTER DAVIS AND OTHER STORIES, was published by Squares & Rebels in September 2021 and was named a Kirkus Reviews Best Book of 2021 and also received a *starred review. He holds a B.A. in American Literature from Middlebury College and an M.F.A. in fiction from American University. He lives in Washington, D.C. www.philipdeanwalker.com/ X: @philipdwalker / Instagram: @flipp525
Accessibility note: This event is up two flights of stairs and Lost City Books does not have an elevator. Please contact events@lostcitybookstore.com with questions.
Dato de accesibilidad: Este evento toma lugar en el segundo piso y Lost City Books no tiene ascensor. Favor de contactar events@lostcitybookstore.com con cualquiera duda.