Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah (Friday Black), Karen Bender (The New Order), and Chaya Bhuvaneswar (White Dancing Elephants) will discuss their powerful collections of short stories, ranging from the lyrical and meditative to the bizarre and darkly dystopian.
Why should you attend?
“[Adjei-Brenyah] is here to signal a warning, or perhaps just to say this is what it feels like, in stories that move and breathe and explode on the page. In Friday Black, the dystopian future Adjei-Brenyah depicts—like all great dystopian fiction—is bleakly futuristic only on its surface. At its center, each story—sharp as a knife—points to right now.” —Tommy Orange, New York Times Book Review
“[An] incisive collection…. Bender’s stories maintain a grounded, subdued realism. The great strength of the collection lies in her ability to examine the ramifications of violence and casual cruelty on individuals and communities…. This is a thoughtful, timely collection.” —Publishers Weekly
“How free is anyone, driven as we are by impulses deeper than thought, moving through inextricably connected societies? [Bhuvaneswar] has created a host of original scenarios through which to probe this vital question—a question that’s both a long-running conversation between East and West and one of the intractable problems of the human condition.” —Los Angeles Times
This event is part of the 2019 Virginia Festival of the Book. A full schedule of events is available here.