Join us for a reading with author Jody Hobbs Hesler, who will read from her debut story collection, What Makes You Think You’re Supposed to Feel Better. A conversation with author Sharon Harrigan will follow. This in-person event will be cosponsored by WriterHouse and will be free and open to the public. We recommend arriving early for the best seating.
About the Book: The grisly death of the hermit outsider in a tight-knit neighborhood prompts a young mom to yearn for solitude. A man wrestles with regrets from a thirty-year-old affair while his wife hovers toward death in the ICU. An older, childless woman aches to rescue the seemingly mistreated child she observes in the grocery store. And a girl’s desire to avoid the party her father dragged her to nearly gets her abducted. Told with restraint and deep compassion against the backdrop of Virginia back streets and small towns, Jody Hobbs Hesler’s debut collection shines with its portraits of longing, disconnection, and the ache for renewal and redemption that comes from our own frailties.
About the Author: What Makes You Think You’re Supposed to Feel Better is Jody Hobbs Hesler’s debut story collection, and her novel, Without You Here, is forthcoming in November 2024. Her words also appear in Necessary Fiction, Atticus Review, Pithead Chapel, CRAFT, Arts & Letters, and many other journals. She teaches at WriterHouse, writes and copy edits for Virginia Wine & Country and Charlottesville Family Magazine, and reads for The Los Angeles Review.
About the Moderator: Sharon Harrigan is the author of the novel Half and the memoir Playing with Dynamite. She has published more than fifty essays, short stories, and reviews in VQR, The New York Times (Modern Love column), The Rumpus, and elsewhere. She teaches creative writing at WriterHouse in Charlottesville, where she lives with her family.
What Makes You Think You’re Supposed to Feel Better will be released on October 15. To order the book, please see below for the New Dominion Bookshop book order form or call the shop at 434-295-2552.
"This is a collection to be treasured, returned to, and remembered as a source of revelation."
—Pamela Petro
New Dominion Bookshop Book Order Form
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