Strange Theater: A Menagerie of Fabulists

Join us for an evening of strangeness and magic as a group of writers in the fabulist vein read their work. The event will be punctuated by multiple raffle drawings. Books by authors will be available for purchase and signing. Readers include Anne Valente, Brenda Peynado, Micah Dean Hicks, Sequoia Nagamatsu, Jennifer Pullen, Anca Szilagyi, Michelle Zamanian, Joy Balio, and Lucas Church.
Contact: Sequoia Nagamatsu

Join us for a lively reading by writers who call the weird, magical, and surreal their stomping grounds. Some magical intermission events will be had (a raffle of signed books and other goodies) and books will also be available for purchase. Free appetizers while they last. Reading starts at 6:30 but come early and mingle.

Lucky Labrador Brewing Company at 915 SE Hawthorne Blvd. The event will be in a private room off of the main taproom.

Anne Valente, Micah Dean Hicks, Brenda Peynado, Joy Baglio, Lucas Church, Jennifer Pullen, Anca Szilagyi, Michelle Zamanian, Sakinah Hofler, Sequoia Nagamatsu

This event is free and accessible.

Reader Bios:

Moderated by Sequoia Nagamatsu (@SequoiaN):
Sequoia Nagamatsu is the author of the Japanese folklore inspired story collection, Where We Go When All We Were Is Gone (2016), a Foreword Reviews Indies Book of the Year Silver medal winner and an Entropy Book of the year. His work has appeared in Conjunctions, ZYZZYVA, Black Warrior Review, Fairy Tale Review, Willow Springs, and Tin House online, among others. He is the managing editor of Psychopomp Magazine, an online quarterly of innovative prose, and teaches creative writing at St. Olaf College in Minnesota.

Micah Dean Hicks (@MicahDeanHicks):
Micah Dean Hicks is the author of the novel Break the Bodies, Haunt the Bones. He is also the author of Electricity and Other Dreams, a collection of dark fairy tales and bizarre fables. His writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Kenyon Review, and elsewhere. Hicks grew up in rural southwest Arkansas and now lives in Orlando. He teaches creative writing at the University of Central Florida.

Brenda Peynado (@BrendaPeynado):
Brenda Peynado is a Dominican-American writer of fiction, nonfiction, comics and screenplays. Her writing style ranges from lyric essays, magical realism, fabulism, science fiction, fantasy, surrealism, to some perfectly realistic exaggerations thrown in the mix. Her work appears in The Georgia Review, The Sun, Threepenny Review, Epoch, Kenyon Review online, Pleiades, Prairie Schooner, and elsewhere. Her stories have won an O. Henry Prize, a Nelson Algren Award from the Chicago Tribune, a Dana Award in Fiction, the Writers at Work contest, two Vermont Studio Center Fellowships, and other awards. Currently, she teaches fiction and screenwriting at the University of Central Florida’s BA and MFA programs.

Anne Valente (@AeValente):
Anne Valente’s debut novel, Our Hearts Will Burn Us Down, released from William Morrow/HarperCollins in 2016 and was selected as a Midwest Connection Pick and an Amazon Best Book of the Month. Her second novel, The Desert Sky Before Us, is forthcoming from William Morrow in Spring 2019. Her short story collection, By Light We Knew Our Names, won the Dzanc Books Short Story Prize (2014), and she is also the author of the fiction chapbook, An Elegy for Mathematics, which was re-released by Bull City Press in 2017. She currently lives in upstate NY where she teaches at Hamilton College.

Joy Baglio (@JoyBaglio):
Joy Baglio is a fiction writer living in Northampton, MA. Her short stories have appeared recently in ​Tin House, The Iowa Review, TriQuarterly, Tin House’s The Open Bar, New Ohio Review, PANK, ​SmokeLong Quarterly, and F(r)iction and she is the recipient of grants and scholarships from Bread Loaf, The Elizabeth George Foundation, and The Speculative Literature Foundation. She serves as Associate Fiction Editor at West Branch, a Grub Street writing instructor, and Founder/Director of Pioneer Valley Writers’ Workshop, where she teaches. She’s at work on her first novel, based on her short story “How to Survive on Land.”

Lucas Church (@Lucas_Church):
Lucas Church is a fiction writer living in North Carolina and the former editor of Pinball. His writing has appeared or is forthcoming in Barrelhouse, Zone 3, Pleiades, and The Fairy Tale Review, among other journals. He works as an editor at University of North Carolina Press.

Sakinah Hofler (@Blackquisition):
Sakinah Hofler was born and raised in Newark, New Jersey. In 2017, she won the Manchester Fiction Prize. Previously, her poetry has been shortlisted for the Manchester Poetry Prize. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Mid-American Review, Hayden’s Ferry Review, Philadelphia Stories, and elsewhere. She was a 2015-2016 recipient of the Edward H. and Mary C. Kingsbury Fellowship at Florida State University. A former quality and chemical engineer for the United States Department of Defense, she’s currently a PhD student and an Alfred C. Yates Fellow at the University of Cincinnati.

Michelle Zamanian (@Mezamanian):
Michelle Zamanian is an Iranian-American writer from Missouri living in St. Paul, Minnesota. She received her MFA from Minnesota State University, Mankato, where she found her radio voice co-hosting KMSU’s Weekly Reader, an author interview radio program and podcast.

Jennifer Pullen (@JPullen19):
Jennifer Pullen’s fiction and poetry have appeared in journals and anthologies including: Cleaver, Off the Coast, Phantom Drift Limited, Prick of the Spindle, Behind the Mask (Meerkat Press), Meat for Tea, and Lunch Ticket. Recently, she was awarded the Omnidawn Fabulist Fiction Prize judged by Lily Hoang. She is an Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at Ohio Northern University.

Anca Szilagyi (@AncaWrites):
Anca L. Szilágyi is a Brooklynite living in Seattle. Her fiction appears in Lilith Magazine, Confrontation, Fairy Tale Review, and elsewhere. Her nonfiction appears in Los Angeles Review of Books, Salon, Electric Literature, and elsewhere. She is the recipient of fellowships and awards from Made at Hugo House, Jack Straw Cultural Center, 4Culture, and Artist Trust. The Stranger hailed Anca as “a fantastic magical realist.” She is the author of Daughters of the Air, which Shelf Awareness called “a striking debut from a writer to watch” and The Seattle Review of Books called “a creation of unearthly talents.”