ELIZABETH TALLENT with BOB SYLVA
Friday, April 27at the Auditorium at CLARA
1425 24th Street, Sacramento
Doors open at 7, readings begin at 7:30
a $10 donation is suggested
Elizabeth Tallent’s work has appeared in The Best American Short Stories, The O. Henry Prize Stories, The Best American Essays, and The Pushcart Prize: Best of the Small Presses, The New Yorker, Esquire, and Harper’s Magazine, among many others. Her latest short story collection, Mendocino Fire, was published in 2015 to lavish praise from The New York Times, which called the collection “enchanting” and singled our her “ability to create characters who force us to withhold judgment and leave us gasping at their absolute, solid reality.” Tin House described it as “driving, furious, erotic, gilded, the sentences flying at you like arrows.” Mendocino Fire was a finalist for the 2016 Pen/Faulkner Award, and includes the story “Tabriz,” which won a Pushcart Prize and will be read by Eric Baldwin at the Stories on Stage Sacramento event. Previous published collections include In Constant Flight, Time with Children, and Honey, as well as the novel Museum Pieces. Her memoir, Perfectionism, will be published this year by Harper’s
She has taught since 1989 in Stanford’s Creative Writing Program and lives with her wife, an antiques dealer, on the Mendocino coast.
Bob Sylva’s name will be familiar to Sacramento Bee readers: he enjoyed a long career at the newspaper, where, well before the era of farm-to-fork, he wrote seasonal features and a column which showcased the city’s then-unheralded diversity. Today, he continues to write, struggles to acquire a primitive French, and spends hours in his Japanese-inspired garden, imagining what-would-Isamu Noguchi do, while divining the whims of large rocks. The King of Karaoke is his debut collection of short stories, many drawn from his experience as a journalist in the Sacramento Valley, a “world inhabited by struggling souls who, despite all, exhibit virtues of optimism, ambition, resilience, and conviction.” The title story of the collection will be read by Matt Rives.
About Stories on Stage Sacramento
Now in its ninth season, Stories on Stage Sacramento is proud of its record, as an all-volunteer organization, of bringing the best in literary fiction, read by actors, to a growing Sacramento audience. Our six 2017 events featured work by Steve Almond, Deborah Willis, Josh Barkan, Vanessa Hua, Joshua Mohr, the Los Rios Writers, and Josh Weil, as well as several of Sacramento’s notable emerging writers. We’ve had a continuing uptick in attendance since we moved to our beautiful new home, the auditorium at CLARA, the E Claire Raley Studio for the Arts.
The dates for our 2018 season are: February 23, April 27, June 29, August 24, and October 26. In addition, our annual showcase featuring the Los Rios Writers will take place on Friday, September 28.