The Program
6:00 - Reception with the authors
6:30 - Readings, discussion, and Q&A
7:30 - Book signing
Looking to discover your new favorite author? Join us for our signature reading series, Story Is the Thing, to hear four stellar Northern California fiction authors read from their debut and latest titles.
Looking to discover your new favorite author? Join us for our signature reading series, Story Is the Thing, to hear four stellar Northern California fiction authors read from their debut and latest titles.
Our guests are Grant Faulkner for his “flash novel,” something out there in the distance, a collaboration with the photographer Gail Butensky about two lovers on a road trip through the American desert; Vanessa Hua for her riveting and deeply heartfelt new novel Coyoteland; Lindsay Kent for My Twin the Murderer, her psychological thriller deeply rooted in the history of Menlo Park and the surrounding region; and, finally, J.P. Lacrampe for Valet, his whimsical novel about a helper robot and his 35-year-old ward’s madcap adventure.
The Lineup
Grant Faulkner is the co-founder of Memoir Nation (and also the co-host of the Memoir Nation podcast), the co-founder of the Flash Fiction Institute, the co-founder of 100 Word Story, and an executive producer on America’s Next Great Author. He was also Executive Director of National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) for 12 years. He has published three books on writing: The Art of Brevity: Crafting the Very Short Story; Pep Talks for Writers: 52 Insights and Actions to Boost Your Creative Mojo; and Brave the Page, a teen writing guide. He’s also published All the Comfort Sin Can Provide, a collection of short stories, Fissures, a collection of 100-word stories, and Nothing Short of 100: Selected Tales from 100 Word Story. His “flash novel,” something out there in the distance, a collaboration with the photographer Gail Butensky, recently came out.
Faulkner’s stories have appeared in dozens of literary magazines, including Tin House, The Southwest Review, and The Gettysburg Review, and he has been anthologized in collections such as Norton’s Flash Fiction America; New Micro: Exceptionally Short Fiction; and in several editions of the annual Best Small Fictions and Best Microfiction anthologies. His essays on creativity have been published in The New York Times, Poets & Writers, Lit Hub, Writer’s Digest, and The Writer. Faulkner serves on the National Writing Project Writers Council, Litquake’s Board of Directors, the Aspen Institute’s Aspen Words’ Creative Council, and Left Margin Lit’s Advisory Board.
Vanessa Hua is the author of the national bestsellers A River of Stars and Forbidden City, as well as Deceit and Other Possibilities, a New York Times Editors’ Choice. A National Endowment for the Arts Literature Fellow, she has also received a Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers’ Award, the Asian/Pacific American Award for Literature, a California Arts Council Fellowship, and a Steinbeck Fellowship in Creative Writing, as well as honors from the de Groot Foundation, the Society of Professional Journalists, and the Asian American Journalists Association, among others. She was a finalist for the California Book Award, the Northern California Book Award, and the New American Voices Award. Previously, she was an award-winning columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle. She has filed stories from China, Burma, South Korea, Ecuador, and Panama, and her work has appeared in publications including The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Atlantic. She teaches at the Warren Wilson MFA Program and elsewhere. The daughter of Chinese immigrants, she lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with her family.
Lindsay Kent is a multimedia storyteller, filmmaker, and author working at the luminous edges of consciousness and culture. Known as The Hallucinarrator, she has spent the past decade directing three international feature films, producing a Hulu documentary on LGBTQ families, and creating branded work for nonprofits and Fortune 500 companies alike. Her 2014 documentary Going Further retraced the arc of America's counterculture through a psychedelic lens, and her docuseries Plant Medicine follows the inner world of an Ayahuasca retreat center in Costa Rica. In recent years Lindsay has returned to her first love, fiction. Blending a filmmaker’s eye with a psychonaut’s curiosity, her stories blur the line between science and spirit, cinema and literature. At the heart of it all is a singular mission: to welcome more seekers into the mystery through stories anyone can access and everyone can feel.
J.P. Lacrampe received his MFA in creative writing from Saint Mary’s College. His short fiction has been published by Glimmer Train, McSweeney's, Instant City, and in Howl: A Collection of the Best Contemporary Dog Wit. He is a teaching professor at Santa Clara University, where he teaches courses in composition, fiction, and screenwriting.
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