Join us for another Abridged Reading to hear Stefan Kiesbye share pieces of his new novel, Berlingeles (Revelore Press, 2018) and Vanessa Blakeslee from her debut novel Juventud (Curbside Splendor, 2015).
Tickets
$5 suggested donation. All proceeds go to Bab’s Lab.
Books
Books by Stefan and Vanessa will be available to purchase. Signings to immediately follow the reading.
RSVP FOR UPDATESAbout the Reading
A wonderful storytelling combination, Stefan’s Berlingeles is a darkly dystopian novel set in the not-too-distant future where a walled-in Los Angeles struggles for survival while trapped within a nightmare.
In quite a different, yet complementary style, Vanessa Blakeslee’s Juventud explores the idealism of youth, the complexities of a ravaged country, and the stories we tell ourselves in order to survive.
About the Authors
STEFAN KIESBYE was born on the German coast of the Baltic Sea. He studied drama and worked in radio before starting a degree in American studies, English, and comparative literature at Berlin’s Freie Universität. His essays and reviews have appeared in the Los Angeles Times, Wall Street Journal, and Publishers Weekly, among others. His first book, Next Door Lived a Girl, won the Low Fidelity Press Novella Award. The novel Your House Is on Fire, Your Children All Gone made Entertainment Weekly’s Must List and was named one of the best books of 2012 by Slate. The LA Noir Fluchtpunkt Los Angeles and the novel The Staked Plains appeared in 2015. On publication of his most recent book Knives, Forks, Scissors, Flames, German newspaper Die Welt called the author “the inventor of the modern German gothic novel.” Kiesbye teaches creative writing at Sonoma State University in Northern California.
VANESSA BLAKESLEE is the author of the debut novel, Juventud (Curbside Splendor, 2015), hailed by Publisher’s Weekly as a “tale of self-discovery and intense first love.” Her story collection, Train Shots (Burrow Press) won the 2014 IPPY Gold Medal in Short Fiction. The book was also long-listed for the 2014 Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award and has been optioned for a feature film by writer/director Hannah Beth King. Vanessa’s writing has appeared in The Southern Review, Green Mountains Review, The Paris Review Daily, The Globe and Mail, and Kenyon Review Online, among many others. Finalist for the 2014 Sherwood Anderson Foundation Fiction Award, she has also been awarded grants and residencies from Yaddo, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, The Banff Centre, Ledig House, the Ragdale Foundation, and in 2013 received the Individual Artist Fellowship in Literature from the Florida Division of Cultural Affairs.
