STEVE ALMOND AND WILLIAM GIRALDI READ FROM THEIR NEW WORKS OF FICTION

Writers and Readers Series
Tuesday, October 18, 2011 | 6 PM
$5/FREE Real Art Ways' Members

Hartford, Connecticut– Real Art Ways' is pleased to announce an evening with two gifted storytellers Steve Almond and William Giraldi who will be reading from their new books, Almond's God Bless America: Stories and Giraldi's Busy Monsters.

Writers and Readers is a social gathering for people who love books. Readings will be preceded and followed by an informal discussion providing an opportunity to talk with others interested in reading, writing and thinking.

Steve Almond's God Bless America: Stories offers a comedic and forlorn portrait of the United States in this ambitious collection about the American Dream and its discontents. William Giraldi's Busy Monsters is a modern-day story about the cost of love-struck obsession and the inevitable monsters of every human heart.

"These wonderful, wickedly hilarious stories have forgiveness at their core. Steve Almond's characters are sons and fathers, inveterate gamblers, thwarted dreamers, the mothers of children gone astray, and God Bless America teaches us how to love every one of them." -Karen Russell, author of Swamplandia!

"Busy Monsters is rammed with life. It has more than promise. A kind of elegiac intensity, remarkable for so young a man, pervades its harmonies." -Harold Bloom

About Steve Almond
Steve Almond is the author the story collections My Life in Heavy Metal and The Evil B.B. Chow, the novel Which Brings Me to You (with Julianna Baggott), and the non-fiction books Candyfreak, Rock and Roll Will Save Your Life and (Not That You Asked). His most recent book, God Bless America: Stories, will be out this October. He is also, crazily, self-publishing books. This Won't Take But a Minute, Honey, is composed of 30 very brief stories, and 30 very brief essays on the psychology and practice of writing. Letters from People Who Hate Me is just plum crazy.

About Willaim Giraldi
William Giraldi teaches at Boston University and is Senior Fiction Editor for AGNI.  His nonfiction and fiction have appeared in The New York Times Book Review, Bookforum, Southern Review, The Believer, Poets & Writers, Yale Review, Antioch Review, and Salmagundi.  His essay on amateur bodybuilding, Freaky Beasts, received a Pushcart Prize and was listed among Most Notable Essays in Best American Essays 2010. His essay The Physics of Speed was a finalist for a 2011 National Magazine Award. His latest book, Busy Monsters was released August 2011.

Support

Real Art Ways' literary programming is made possible with the generous support of Travelers, Bank of America Foundation, Hartford Foundation for Public Giving, the Greater Hartford Arts Council's United Arts Campaign, the Connecticut Commission on Culture and Tourism, NewAlliance Foundation, Sandy and Howard Fromson, and Real Art Ways' members.

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