Here are some can’t-miss events:
My friend and fellow writing group member Amy Stolls will be reading from her new novel The Ninth Wife:
Sunday, May 15, 2011
Reading, 1:00 pm
Politics & Prose
5015 Connecticut Ave. NW
Washington, DC
I read The Ninth Wife in progress and can safely say that it is HILARIOUS. From the website:
What sane woman would consider becoming any man’s ninth wife?
Bess Gray is a thirty-five-year-old folklorist and amateur martial artist living in Washington, DC. Just as she’s about to give up all hope of marriage, she meets Rory, a charming Irish musician, and they fall in love. But Rory is a man with a secret, which he confesses to Bess when he asks for her hand: He’s been married eight times before. Shocked, Bess embarks on a quest she feels she must undertake before she can give him an answer. With her bickering grandparents (married sixty-five years), her gay neighbor (himself a mystery), a shar-pei named Stella, and a mannequin named Peace, Bess sets out on a cross-country journey—unbeknownst to Rory—to seek out and question the wives who came before. What she discovers about her own past is far more than she bargained for.
The Ninth Wife is a smart, funny, eye-opening tale of love, marriage, and the power of stories to unlock the true meaning of home and family.
More details (and laughs) at Amy’s website; be sure to check out the FAQs: http://amystolls.com/
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My friend and former writing group member Ann McLaughlin will be reading from her new novel A Trial in Summer:
Sunday, May 22, 2pm
The Writer's Center,
4508 Walsh St., Bethesda, MD
(301-654-8664)
Saturday, June 11, 6pm
Politics and Prose Bookstore
5015 Connecticut Ave. NW
Washington, D.C.
(202-363-7663)
I read A Trial in Summer in progress, and loved learning more about San Francisco in the 1930s. From the website:
Lorie Bronson, an idealistic college freshman, arrives in San Francisco in the summer of 1939 with her father, who is the judge in the deportation trial of a longshoreman and labor leader. San Francisco is full of contrasts from the luxuries of Nob Hill, where the family is staying, to the dangerous docks that Lorie explores. Lorie misses her dead mother and resents her father’s new wife. A passionate photographer, Lorie disobeys her father and goes down to the docks to photograph longshoreman at work and in strikes. She meets Dave Rafferty, who says he is a longshoreman, and Lorie talks to him about the trial. But Dave turns out to be a company spy, who steals her camera and endangers both the trial and her father’s career. In surviving her own trial during the long summer, Lorie learns about labor and social justice and achieves a more mature relationship with her father and a clearer sense of herself.
More information: http://www.annmclaughlinwriting.com/
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If that’s not enough, poet/writer Sandra Beasley will be emceeing the Story/Stereo event at The Writer’s Center and promises that it’s going to be an amazing event! Emerging Writer Fellowship recipients Merrill Feitell (Here Beneath Low-Flying Planes) and Susanna Lang (Even Now) will read. Musical guest: The Cornel West Theory
Friday, May 20, 2011 at 8:00 PM
The Writer’s Center
4508 Walsh Street, Bethesda, MD 20815
P: 301.654.8664
I met Merrill Feitell at Bread Loaf, and she was awesome, and Sandra is no liar—so I’ve put this one on my list of,“I Desperately Want To Be There.”
For more information: http://www.writer.org/sslpage.aspx?pid=838