Debut novelists Marc Fitten & Laleh Khadivi discuss and sign their books June 18, 2009

Marc Fitten: Valeria's Last Stand

With humor and sensitivity, author Marc Fitten delivers an unexpected and entirely inspiring first novel that will leave you begging for more. Valeria’s Last Stand is a comic romp celebrating late-flowering love in a Hungarian village that will appeal to readers of The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society and A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian.

Marc Fitten was born in Brooklyn to Panamanian parents. He spent much of the 1990s living and traveling in Europe, based in Hungary. He’s been published in Prairie Schooner, the Louisville Review, and the Hogtown Creek Review, and has published a napkin online at Esquire. Marc is a Ph.D. student at Georgia State University and received the Paul Bowles Fellowship for Fiction. He is currently the editor of the Chattahoochee Review.

Laleh Khadivi: The Age of Orphans

"Ironic, beautifully written, brutal and ugly, Khadivi's ambitious debut novel follows a Kurdish boy, Reza, who is tragically and violently conscripted into the shah's army after his own people are slaughtered in battle. Channeling fear and hate into brutal acts against the Kurds, Reza makes a quick climb up the military career ladder and, as overseer of his own people, he promotes Kurdish assimilation and the budding nation of Iran while mercilessly silencing voices of Kurdish independence. This difficult but powerful novel, the first of a trilogy, introduces a writer with a strong, unflinching voice and a penetrating vision." Publishers Weekly (Starred Review)

Khadivi was born in Esfahan, Iran, but fled with her family to the United States in the aftermath of the Islamic Revolution. Her projected trilogy will trace three generations of a Kurdish family based loosely on her own as they make their way to the United States and undergo the profound transformations of the immigrant experience.

Official Website: http://www.keplers.com