The Midtown Scholar Bookstore is honored to welcome local author Tara Stillions Whitehead to Harrisburg for an in-person book launch on her new book, The Year of the Monster.

This event is free and open to the public, with registration. This is an in-person event with a live-stream option via Zoom. Doors will open at 6:15pm, and the event will begin at 7:00pm. Virtual attendees will receive the event access link 24 hours and 1 hour before the event begins.

Vaccination Requirements:

You must show proof that you are fully vaccinated against COVID-19 for entrance to this event. We will accept either a physical vaccination card, digital card, or a photo of the card on your phone. Per the CDC, people are considered fully vaccinated 2 weeks after their second dose in a 2-dose series, or 2 weeks after a single-dose vaccine.

Event Policies:

• Seating is general admission; first come, first served

• Masks are required

• Book browsing will not be permitted after 8pm

About the Book:

The Year of the Monster explores American culture as commodity and comorbidity. From black holes and animal extinctions to death row trauma porn and the redacted scripts of Hollywood abuses: these sixteen stories subvert traditional notions of justice, challenge vulnerable characters to survive in transgressive spaces. Mixing traditional prose with screenplay and script-hybrid, and certainly not without hope, The Year of the Monster encourages close examination of how American media and our complicity in its marriage of violence and culture perpetuate the human and environmental crises.

About the Author:

A native Southern Californian, alumna of University of Southern California’s historic School of Cinematic Arts, and graduate of San Diego State University’s MFA writing program, Tara Stillions Whitehead is a filmmaker and writer teaching in Central Pennsylvania. After working as a DGA assistant director and then as assistant to the executive producers of two number one prime time television shows, Tara left Hollywood to pursue projects that subvert celebrity worship and the dangerous narratives promoted by mainstream American media.

Tara’s writing has been published in or is forthcoming from various award-winning journals, magazines, and anthologies, including cream city review, The Rupture, Fairy Tale Review, Gone Lawn, PRISM international, Chicago Review, Pithead Chapel, Jellyfish Review, and Hobart. She is Assistant Professor of Film, Video, and Digital Media Production at Messiah University, where she is also faculty for the renowned Young Writers Workshop, and has given public lectures on monsters, media, and film. Tara’s writing has been included in Wigleaf’s Top 50 in both 2021 and 2022, and she has been nominated for Best of the Net, Best Small fictions, the Pushcart Prize, and the AWP Intro Journals Award.

Tara is the author of three books: the hybrid chapbook, Blood Histories (Galileo Press), and two full-length story collections–The Year of the Monster, which will be released by Unsolicited Press in September 2022, and They More Than Burned, from ELJ Editions in August 2023.