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.)