Join us for an evening with author Louise Marburg, who will read from her new collection of stories, No Diving Allowed. 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: From F. Scott Fitzgerald to John Cheever, the swimming pool has long held a unique place in the mythos of the American idyll, by turns status symbol and respite. The fourteen stories that comprise No Diving Allowed fearlessly plunge the depths of the human condition as award-winning author Louise Marburg freights her narratives with the often unfathomable pressure of what lies beneath. In “Identical,” sibling rivalry between brothers exposes lingering resentments of men who never made peace with boyhood animosities; “Let Me Stay With You” follows a man whose innocent attention to a child is gravely misunderstood. The trials of a fractured family come to the fore in the trenchant, unapologetic “Minor Thefts.” Siblings, friends, parents, couples, children: the characters in these stories ask how much any of us can bear before we break. Marburg’s writing is agile, witty, and crisply spare. These are tales of regret and mercy, of bonds forged and frayed, and most of all our individual capacity to love even that which damns us. As readers of these pages will learn, the difference between swimming and drowning is often nothing more than the will to live.
About the Author: Louise Marburg is the author of a previous collection of stories, The Truth About Me, which was named a best book of 2017 by San Francisco Chronicle and Entropy. Winner of the Independent Press Book Award for Short Stories, The Truth About Me was also shortlisted for the William Saroyan International Prize for Writing. Her stories have appeared in Narrative, Ploughshares, STORY, The Hudson Review, and elsewhere. Her work has been supported by the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, the Kenyon Writers Workshops, and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. She lives in New York City with her husband, the artist Charles Marburg.
About the Moderator: Sharon Harrigan is the author of the novel Half and the memoir Playing with Dynamite, both published by the University of Wisconsin Press. She has an MFA in creative writing from Pacific University and has published more than fifty essays, short stories, and reviews in such venues as VQR, The New York Times (Modern Love column), and Narrative. Half was named a 2021 Michigan Notable Book. She teaches creative writing to adults at WriterHouse in Charlottesville, Virginia, where she lives with her family.
No Diving Allowed will be released on October 6. To order the book, please see below for the New Dominion Bookshop book order form or call the shop at 434-295-2552.
"In her riveting and memorable story collection, No Diving Allowed, Louise Marburg explores forbidden lines and boundaries imposed by class, gender, families and friendships. Some characters step forward with wit and resolve while others do so with threat and devastation. Linked by the presence of swimming pools both clear and murky, these compelling stories are deeply refreshing."
—Jill McCorkle, author of Hieroglyphics
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