National book award finalist Jamel Brinkley will read from his highly anticipated new short story collection, Witness. He will be joined in conversation by fellow Workshop alum Carmen Maria Machado. Witness has been enthusiastically praised by The New York Times, NPR, Los Angeles Times, and numerous other places, and author Yiyun Li says, “Jamel Brinkley reminds one of the iconic short-story writers Edward P. Jones and Mavis Gallant. This is a dazzling collection by a masterful storyteller.”
Jamel Brinkley is also the author of A Lucky Man: Stories, finalist for the National Book Award. He has been awarded an O. Henry Prize, the Rome Prize, a Wallace Stegner Fellowship, and a Lannan Foundation Fellowship. His work has appeared in The Paris Review, A Public Space, Ploughshares, and The Best American Short Stories. He currently teaches at the Writers' Workshop.

Carmen Maria Machado is the author of the bestselling memoir In the Dream House and the award-winning short story collection Her Body and Other Parties. She has been a finalist for the National Book Award and the winner of prizes, including the Bard Fiction Prize, the Lambda Literary Award for Lesbian Fiction, and the National Book Critics Circle's John Leonard Prize. She is a Visiting Associate Professor of fiction for the Writers’ Workshop.

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