Next Friday night, April 29, I’ll be introducing debut novelist and Jezebel blogger Anna North at Girls Write Now’s Chapters reading at St. John Church. She’ll read from her forthcoming America Pacifica, a dystopian story set at the dawn of a new ice age and narrated by an 18-year-old girl who’s searching for her missing mother and has been addicted to huffing solvent. I know the book will resonate with the girls in our program, who are also reading that night. Join me!
Afterward, I’m rushing off to The Invisible Dog Art Center for One Story’s Literary Debutante Ball, a huge annual party benefiting the excellent and tireless literary magazine. The ball will present five One Story writers who’ve made their debuts in the past year and honor author Dani Shapiro. The host will be Isaiah Sheffer of Public Radio International’s Selected Shorts, and there will be specialty cocktails, music by swing band Lapis Luna, dancing, and a silent art auction.
I’m on the Benefit Committee, as are actors Jamie Lee Curtis and Andrew McCarthy, writers T Cooper, Amy Hempel, A.M. Homes, Leigh Newman, Dolores Rice, George Saunders, and Jim & Karen Shepard, and art world impresarios Mark Hage and Paul Morris. Join me here too!
The auction is curated by the artist David Goodman, and you can see the artwork, including Sarah Aphrodite’s leopards at the top of this post, in the One Story slideshow. You can also support the magazine by bidding remotely.