Southern Lit Alliance will host acclaimed Indie Next author Claire Vaye Watkins on Thursday, April 21, at the Arts Building, on the corner of 11th and King Streets.
Review for Claire Vaye Watkins:
As drought has transformed the California landscape into a sprawling desert, the characters of Gold Fame Citrus struggle with the memories of their past lives and their present horrors. Claire Vaye Watkins creates a world that has been ravaged by pollution and greed; a story that illustrates how environmental disaster could affect our daily lives.
Unrelenting drought has transfigured Southern California into a surreal, phantasmagoric landscape. With the Central Valley barren, underground aquifer drained, and Sierra snowpack entirely depleted, most “Mojavs,” are prevented by both armed vigilantes and an indifferent bureaucracy from freely crossing borders to lusher regions. Immensely moving, profoundly disquieting, and mind-blowingly original, Watkins’s novel explores the myths we believe about others and tell about ourselves, the double-edged power of our most cherished relationships, and the shape of hope in a precarious future that may be our own.
The event schedule consists of a cocktail reception with Ms. Watkins for VIP ticket-holders at 5 p.m. and a reading at 6 p.m. A book signing will immediately follow. Ms. Watkins will also visit Sequoyah High School for a discussion with local high school students as part of So Lit’s Writers in Classrooms program.
General admission tickets begin at $15. A student ticket is available for $5 with a valid student ID. VIP tickets, which include the reception, reserved seating, and fast track super powers at the book signing cost $25.
Ms. Watkins’ stories and essays have appeared in Granta, One Story, The Paris Review, Ploughshares, Glimmer Train, Best of the West 2011, New Stories from the Southwest 2013, the New York Times and elsewhere.
Her collection of short stories, Battleborn, won the Story Prize, the Dylan Thomas Prize, New York Public Library’s Young Lions Fiction Award, the Rosenthal Family Foundation Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and a Silver Pen Award from the Nevada Writers Hall of Fame. Her first novel, Gold Fame Citrus, was just released with much attention.
A Guggenheim Fellow, Ms. Watkins is on the faculty of the Helen Zell Writers’ Program at the University of Michigan. She is also the co-director, with Derek Palacio, of the Mojave School, a free creative writing workshop for teenagers in rural Nevada.
The Southern Lit Alliance engages audiences through innovative literary arts experiences and educational enrichment in local schools and underserved communities in Chattanooga. For more information about So Lit and the South Bound lecture series, and to purchase tickets or view the lineup and schedule, visit So Lit’s newly designed website: www.SouthernLitAlliance.org, or call 267-1218.