*This event has been cancelled. We hope to reschedule at a future date. Apologies for the inconvenience!
From three authors, a multi-genre evening of fiction.
This March, the Midtown Scholar Bookstore is pleased to welcome fiction writers Amber Sparks, Joseph Scapellato, and Jamie Beth Cohen to Harrisburg as they present their new works of fiction, And I Do Not Forgive You: Stories and Other Revenges (Sparks),The Made-Up Man: A Novel (Scapellato), and Wasted Pretty (Cohen)
This event is free and open to the public. Book signing & mingle to follow discussion.
About And I Do Not Forgive You:
Feminism fuels fantasy in this genre-busting collection by “master of the fantastic” (Roxane Gay) Amber Sparks.
Exciting fans of such writers as Kelly Link, Karen Russell, and Carmen Maria Machado with prose that shimmers and stings, Amber Sparks holds a singular role in the canon of the weird. Now, she reaches new, uncanny heights with And I Do Not Forgive You. In “Mildly Happy, With Moments of Joy,” a friend is ghosted by a simple text message; in “Everyone’s a Winner at Meadow Park,” a teen precariously coming of age in a trailer park befriends an actual ghost. At once humorous and unapologetically fi erce, these stories shine an interrogating light on the adage that “history likes to lie about women”― as the subjects of “A Short and Speculative History of Lavoisier’s Wife” and “You Won’t Believe What Really Happened to the Sabine Women” (it’s true, you won’t) will attest. Blending fairy tales and myths with apocalyptic technologies, all tethered intricately by shades of rage, And I Do Not Forgive You offers a mosaic of an all-too-real world that fails to listen to its silenced goddesses.
About The Made-Up Man:
Stanley had known it was a mistake to accept his uncle Lech’s offer to apartment-sit in Prague―he’d known it was one of Lech’s proposals, a thinly veiled setup for some invasive, potentially dangerous performance art project. But whatever Lech had planned for Stanley, it would get him to Prague and maybe offer a chance to make things right with T after his failed attempt to propose.
Stanley can take it. He can ignore their hijinks, resist being drafted into their evolving, darkening script. As the operation unfolds it becomes clear there’s more to this performance than he expected; they know more about Stanley’s state of mind than he knows himself. He may be able to step over chalk outlines in the hallway, may be able to turn away from the women acting as his mother or the men performing as his father, but when a man made up to look like Stanley begins to play out his most devastating memory, he won’t be able to stand outside this imitation of his life any longer.
Immediately and wholly immersive, Joseph Scapellato’s debut novel, The Made-Up Man, is a hilarious examination of art’s role in self-knowledge, a sinister send-up of self-deception, and a big-hearted investigation into the cast of characters necessary to help us finally meet ourselves.
About Wasted Pretty:
During junior year of high school, star student and stellar lacrosse player Alice Burton grew four inches, and, thanks to her mom’s experimental health food products, shed twenty pounds. Alice has mixed feelings about her surprising transformation.
On the plus side: Chris Thompson, the hot college guy she has a crush on, talks to her.
On the minus side: Her dad's creepy friend, professional athlete Karl Bell, lets his eyes, and his hugs, linger too long.
After a disturbing encounter in a dark hallway, Alice realizes the response some men have to her new body isn’t just disgusting, it’s dangerous. Her life is further complicated by her parents’ crumbling finances and the family’s entanglement with Karl.
Set in Pittsburgh in 1992, Wasted Pretty is about a girl determined to protect her body, her future, and her heart.
About Amber Sparks:
Amber Sparks is the author of a previous collection, May We Shed These Human Bodies, and her fiction has appeared in American Short Fiction, The Collagist, and elsewhere. She lives in Washington, DC.
About Joseph Scapellato:
Joseph Scapellato’s debut story collection, Big Lonesome, was published in 2017. He earned his MFA in fiction at New Mexico State University and has been published in Kenyon Review Online, Gulf Coast, Post Road Magazine, PANK, UNSAID, and other literary magazines. His work has been anthologized in Forty Stories, Gigantic Worlds: An Anthology of Science Flash Fiction, and The Best Innovative Writing. Scapellato is an assistant professor of English in the creative writing program at Bucknell University. He grew up in the suburbs of Chicago and lives in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania, with his wife, daughter, and dog.
About Jamie Beth Cohen:
Jamie Beth Cohen writes about difficult things, but her friends think she’s funny. Her non-fiction has appeared in TeenVogue.com, The Washington Post/On Parenting, Salon, and several other outlets. Her debut novel, Wasted Pretty, is about a sixteen-year-old girl who has to deal with wanted and unwanted attention when she inadvertently goes from blending in to standing out. Although a writer at heart, Jamie has done a number of other things in order to feed, clothe, and shelter herself and her family. Her favorite job was scooping ice cream in Pittsburgh, PA when she was sixteen years old. She thinks everything about sixteen was wonderful and amazing, except all the stuff that was horrible.
