The All But True reading series presents an evening of flash fiction with SEBASTIAN CASTILLO and SHARON WHITE.
Both of these authors use the short-short-story form to explore surreal situations that bear a provocative resemblance to our “ordinary” world.
Sebastian Castillo’s 49 VENEZUELAN NOVELS confounds readers’ expectations by stripping the novel down to its barest bones. Each novel occupies a single page. Some consist of a single sentence. Yet Castillo draws on the power of innuendo, intimation, and absence to create narratives eerily rich in their sparseness. Castillo was born in Caracas, Venezuela, and grew up in New York. Said Blake Butler, author of 300,000,000, “Sebastian Castillo’s micro-fictional assemblages invoke a logical illogic wherein nothing is untrue or impossible, secrets have secrets, and any sentence can change the world…. A magical, medicinal mini-encyclopedia for our ongoing human rune.”
Sharon White, a multi-award-winning poet and author of creative nonfiction, turns to fiction with the inventive BOILING LAKE (ON VOYAGE), micro-tales of travel to the past, present, future–and other worlds. White’s exquisite prose and off-kilter juxtapositions turn even familiar territory strange and unsettling. “With mad singing in strange lands and familiar places, these tiny stories speak a language of dark lyricism,” says Amy Parkison, author of THE PETALS OF YOUR EYES. White’s awards include include the Italo Calvino Prize in Fabulist Fiction, the Marguerite McGlinn Prize for Fiction from Philadelphia Stories, the Neil Shepard Prize in Fiction from Green Mountains Review, a Pennsylvania Council on the Arts Fellowship for Creative Nonfiction, the Leeway Foundation Award for Achievement, a Colorado Council on the Arts Fellowship, and a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship.
The event includes author readings, discussion, book signings, and (following our tradition) lots of snacks. Note the new location at Penn Book Center, 34th & Sansom.
Recent Comments