Behind the Book Reading Series -- FREE -- Joshua Ferris & John Haskell May 10, 2007

Join us for an evening of darkly entertaining wit and pathos as Joshua Ferris and John Haskell read in the Behind the Book Reading Series on Thursday, May 10th, from 7:00-9:00pm -- FREE.

WHERE: KGB Bar, 85 East Fourth Street
(between Second & Third Aves.; take the F/V to Second Ave. or the No. 6 to Astor Place).

CONTACT: [email protected] or www.kgbbar.com

WHO:
JOSHUA FERRIS'S debut novel, Then We Came to the End, received a glowing cover-page review in the New York Times Book Review. His short fiction has appeared in The Iowa Review, Best New American Stories, Prairie Schooner, Phoebe, and New Stories from the South: Best of 2007. Joshua worked as an advertising copywriter in Chicago before attending the MFA program at the University of California, Irvine.

“‘Then We Came to the End,’ it turns out, is neither small nor angry, but expansive, great-hearted and acidly funny....Even after moving on and rebuilding their lives, the employees who exit Ferris’s unnamed firm come to miss it, the drudgery, the infuriations, the hours spent with ‘this person or that who rankled and bugged and offended angels in heaven.’ And the reader will be able to empathize, coming to the end of this perceptive and darkly entertaining novel.”
—New York Times Book Review

“Although Ferris’ vision is less grim, it is no less grave; what looks at first glance like a sweet-tempered satire of workplace culture is revealed upon closer inspection to be a very serious novel about, well, America. It may even be, in its own modest way, a great American novel.”
—Los Angeles Times

JOHN HASKELL is the author of the novel American Purgatorio and a short story collection, I Am Not Jackson Pollock. He founded the Huron Theater in Chicago, received an M.F.A. from Columbia University, and is the recipient of a New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship. His work has appeared in Granta, The Paris Review, Conjunctions, The Believer, and Ploughshares, and he is a contributor to the NPR radio show The Next Big Thing. He lives in Brooklyn.
“‘American Purgatorio,’ John Haskell’s gutsy, weirdly engrossing first novel, is a domestic interpretation of Dante. It’s a road story divided into seven sections, each named for a deadly sin, with a hero, Jack, who pursues his lost love from Brooklyn to San Diego . . . Turn the last page, and you’ll realize that this strange, moving book has done just what a first novel should: it has left an impression.”
—New York Times Book Review

“Haskell, whose short story collection ‘I Am Not Jackson Pollock’ promised the raw wit of thirtysomething passive-aggressive lit, now proves that he can keep it going for the novel, adding mystery and kindness to his palette. [He is] one of those rare authors who makes language seem limitless in its possibilities.”
—Los Angeles Times

MORE:
BEHIND THE BOOK is a literacy nonprofit working with low-income students in NYC public schools. Our mission is to excite children and young adults about reading. Working in the 1st-12th grades, we bring authors and their books into individual classrooms to build literacy skills and nurture a new generation of book readers.

www.behindthebook.org

Official Website: http://www.behindthebook.org