From GATHERING VOLUMES
Three Award-Winning Authors will be visiting Gathering Volumes in Perrysburg on Friday, September 21 at 6 p.m.
Brad Felver is a fiction writer, essayist, and teacher of writing. His honors include the O. Henry Award, a Pushcart Prize special mention, and the Zone 3 Fiction Prize. Currently he serves as Lecturer and Associate Chair of the English Department at Bowling Green State University. Felver’s short story collection, The Dogs of Detroit, which releases on Tuesday, September 4, was recently in the news for winning the 2018 Drue Heinz Literature Prize for short fiction. Each of the collection’s 14 stories focuses on grief and its many permutations. “This grief alternately devolves into violence, silence, solitude, and utter isolation. In some cases, grief drives the stories as a strong, reactionary force, and yet in other stories, that grief evolves quietly over long stretches of time,” Mr. Felver said in a statement.
Michael A. Ferro has been awarded an Honorable Mention by Glimmer Train for their New Writers Award, received the Jim Cash Creative Writing Award for Fiction, and been nominated for The Pushcart Prize. Michael graduated with a degree in Creative Writing from Michigan State University. In addition to his fiction and humor publications, Michael is also a Sportswriter and a Features Writer for CBS Detroit. Ferro will be visiting with his debut novel, Title 13. A darkly comic, cautionary tale of mental illness and unconventional love, Title 13 deftly blends satirical comedy aimed at the hot-button issues of modern society with the gut-wrenching reality of an intensely personal descent into addiction. When asked what compels him to write, Mr. Ferro said, “I think what compels me to write stories is the simple act of getting them out of my head. In an effort to become better people, we’re always trying to make sense of our past or some trauma that we suffered through, and for many, we use art and creativity to do this. Musicians create songs, painters paint paintings, and writers write stories.”
Lillian Li is the recipient of a Hopwood Award in Short Fiction, as well as Glimmer Train’s New Writer Award. Her debut novel, Number One Chinese Restaurant, was named a Summer Must-Read by TIME, Buzzfeed, The Wall Street Journal, Star Tribune, Fast Company, The Village Voice, Toronto Star, Fortune Magazine, InStyle, and O, The Oprah Magazine. When asked why she wrote a book set in a Chinese restaurant, Ms. Li responded, “My mom found me this gig at a Chinese restaurant. It was super weird and stressful and terrifying and lonely. That experience stayed with me.” She added, “One of the engines of the book is that Jimmy wants his own restaurant, but what he’s really angry about is that he doesn’t want to keep making the Chinese food or having the kind of Chinese restaurant that is expected. It’s a really interesting tug-of-war of wanting that kind of respect and originality and cooking your own flavor, but also wanting to be successful and understanding that to be successful, you kind of have to fit in with what’s expected. A rich place for all of those tensions.”
Each author will discuss and read from their latest book at Gathering Volumes in Perrysburg on Friday, September 21, 2018 starting at 6 pm.
