Please join us for a reading and signing of Kat Gardiner’s intimate, intricate work of microfiction Little Wonder.

For seated tickets and pre-ordered books, RSVP here

Excerpts from Little Wonder with musical guest Whitney Ballen

Kicking off the West Coast tour, Kat Gardiner reads excerpts from Little Wonder with musical guest, Rebecca Rasmussen (of Bitchin', The Wild Body, Duover)

Brookline Booksmith welcomes three authors:  Amy Fusselman, Kat Gardiner and Esther Gerritsen.

 Amy Fusselman, is a writer, artist, and publisher based in New York City. She is the author of four books of nonfiction: Idiophone (Coffee House Press, 2018), Savage Park: A Meditation on Play, Space and Risk for Americans Who Are Nervous, Distracted and Afraid to Die (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2015); The Pharmacist’s Mate (McSweeney’s, 2013); and 8 (McSweeney’s, 2013). Her writing has appeared in ARTnews, Ms., The New York Times, Artnet, The Believer, McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, and The Atlantic, among other places.

Kat Gardiner was born in Oklahoma, raised in the Pacific Northwest, and currently based in Detroit. She carries a restlessness through her writing that's been honed by a lifelong search for roots. Gardiner studied creative writing at Bennington College in Vermont, and later studied with Tom Spanbauer in Portland, Oregon. She will be reading from her debut collection of microfiction, Little Wonder. Asymmetric and misremembered, Little Wonder fictionalizes the experience of opening and closing an all-ages music venue and café with her husband in a small Pacific Northwest town. An adult coming-of-age story told in fragments, Little Wonder, explores the bittersweet love affair that takes place between despair and hope whenever you try with all your heart to do something you believe in, and fail.

Esther Gerritsen is a Dutch novelist, columnist, and scriptwriter. She made her literary debut in 2000. She is one of the most established, widely read, and highly praised authors in the Netherlands. Gerritsen had the honor of writing the Dutch Book Week gift in 2016, which had a print-run of 700,000 copies. In 2014 she was awarded the Frans Kellendonk Prize for her oeuvre. Craving has recently been made into a Dutch film under its original title ‘Dorst’. She will be reading from her new book, Craving, a fearless, unprejudiced investigation of the shadows of the human mind, a novel about a mother and a daughter tormenting each other with good intentions.

Join us for a reading of microfiction featuring Kat Gardiner presenting her debut collection, Little Wonder, alongside contributors to the new anthology New Micro: Exceptionally Short Stories.

Asymmetric and misremembered, Little Wonder fictionalizes the experience of opening and closing an all-ages music venue and café with her husband in a small Pacific Northwest town. An adult coming-of-age story told in fragments, Gardiner explores the bittersweet love affair that takes place between despair and hope whenever you try with all your heart to do something you believe in, and fail. With illustrations by Jessica Lynch. All musical references are real and featuring appearances by Little Wings, Mirah, Neko Case, Karl Blau, Tiny Vipers, Calvin Johnson, and many others.

All of the stories in New Micro are exceptionally short, revealing themselves in no more than 300 words. With a foreword by Robert Shapard and an afterword by Christopher Merrill, this book brings you fresh approaches to an exacting form that demands precision, a species of brevity that is surprisingly expansive. Writers say the pieces are hard to compose, but readers say they are easy to appreciate, a pleasure to envision, a wonder to watch life spun out and painted in small places. Real and surreal, lyrical and prosaic, here are 135 stories by 89 authors, certain to make you think.

About the authors:
Kat Gardiner was born in Oklahoma and raised in the Pacific Northwest. Little Wonder is her debut collection of short fiction. Gardiner studied creative writing at Bennington College. Little Wonder reads like a series of love notes to a former self, or a collection of poloroids made golden with age.

Roberta Allen is the author of numerous works of fiction and nonfiction, including The Playful Way to Serious Writing and Fast Fiction. A Tennessee Williams Fellow in Fiction, she is a short story writer, novelist and memoirist. As a visual artist, she has exhibited internationally, is in the collection of The Metropolitan Museum of Art among others. She has taught at Columbia University and The New School.

Paul Beckman is the author of Peek and Come! Meet My Family and other stories; a novella, Lovers and Other Mean People; and a chap-book, Maybe I Ought to Sit in a Dark Room for a While. He has had over 350 of his stories published in print, online, and via audio, in Literary Orphans, Connecticut Review, Playboy, Matter Press, Litro, Thrice Fiction, The Airgonaut, Jellyfish Review, and r.kv.r.y, as well as many others.

Francine Witte is the author of three poetry chapbooks, two flash fiction chapbooks, and a full-length poetry collection, Cafe Crazy. She is also a reviewer and photographer. She is a former high school English teacher, and she lives in New York.

This event is free and will take place at Warby Parker (55 Bergen St.)

FREE!

Celebrating the Release of Kat Gardiner’s new book Little Wonder. Third Man Books is very excited to host a night of literature and music at Third Man Records Cass Corridor. Stories told by Kat Gardiner, Patricia Wheeler and Cherise Morris.

Special solo performance by Fred Thomas.

FREE!

Literati is thrilled to welcome Detroit-based author Kat Gardiner, in support of her debut collection of short fiction, Little Wonder. The collection springs from the year Gardiner spent in Anacortes, Washington, during her early twenties. Young and idealistic, she opened a coffee shop and music venue with her husband in the hopes of finding a home in the city's artistic community. The experiment lasted exactly one year. Gardiner closed the coffee shop and moved away from Anacortes, ending a stressful and dreamlike chapter in her life. Musical performance by Eliza Godfrey.