The Comic Novel
Our reading series takes a comic turn on October 25 with two authors whose novels are witty and intelligent, quirky and hopeful.
Christine
Lehner, whose new novel, Absent a Miracle, came out this August, was
described by the New York Times as a “talented humorist” and the book as
“pure, unadulterated adulterous entertainment”. Her previous book was a collection
of stories, What to Wear to See the Pope (Carroll & Graf, 2004), and her
novel Expecting was published in 1983. Lehner’s short stories and essays
have appeared in various literary magazines, including the North American Review,
Agni, New Directions Anthologies, Chelsea, Salmagundi, Image, the Southwest
Review and The New York Times. She writes the blog Sort Quench & Dump
(http://sortquenchdump.blogspot.com/).
She lives near the Hudson River with Charles Branch, two dogs, and thousands of
bees.
Ed
Park’s first novel, Personal Days, published by Random House in May
2008, was a finalist for the PEN Hemingway Award and the John Sargent Sr. First
Novel Prize, and was named one of Time’s Top Ten Fiction Books of the year.
He is a founding editor of The Believer and the former editor of the Voice
Literary Supplement. His articles, essays, and reviews have appeared in The
New York Times, The Boston Globe, Salon, and other publications.
For several years he wrote film criticism for The Village Voice, famously
ending his review of Clifford the Big Red Dog with the questions: “Why
big? Why red? Why dog?” His short fiction and creative nonfiction have appeared
in various anthologies and journals such as Trampoline, Burn This Book,
and Read Hard. He drew a comic strip at Yale and received his M.F.A. from
Columbia, where he currently teaches in the graduate writing program. Ed writes
a science fiction column, Astral Weeks, for the Los Angeles Times,
runs the blog Disambiguation (formerly The Dizzies), and publishes the e-zine,
New-York Ghost. He lives in Manhattan with his family.
The reading will be introduced by Marilyn Johnson, author of The Dead Beat: Lost Souls, Lucky Stiffs, and the Perverse Pleasures of Obituaries. Marilyn’s latest, This Book Is Overdue!: How Librarians and Cybrarians Can Save Us All, is due out from Harper on February 2, 2010—and Marilyn will read for us at the Writers’ Center just a few weeks later on February 28!
Suggested
Donation: $5 ($3 for HVWC members)
Programs and events at The Hudson Valley Writers’ Center are made possible, in part, by grants from the Bydale Foundation, the David G. Taft Foundation, the Orchard Foundation, the William Robinson Foundation, and the Thendara Foundation; with public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts, a State Agency, and the National Endowment for the Arts; and by the Basic Program Support Grant of Arts Westchester with funds from Westchester County Government.