Writers' Workshop graduate Jeff Boyd will read from The Weight. "Like Binx Bolling, the hero of Walker Percy's classic The Moviegoer, Jeff Boyd is on a search. And like Binx's, the object of that search is too essential and nebulous and all-encompassing to name. It has to do with love, of course, and human connection, and ultimate truths, but in Boyd's case it extends past the final limits of racism to touch upon the universal existential terrors of an Everyman. Boyd has August Wilson's scope and James Alan McPherson's human heart, but his literary touchstones are wide and catholic, and his passion and intelligence inform every page of his novel The Weight. I think of this book as the announcement of a big new talent and the start of a long and meaningful career." — Joshua Ferris

Jeff Boyd is a former public-school teacher from Chicago and a recent graduate of the Iowa Writers' Workshop, where he received the Deena Davidson Friedman Prize for Fiction. He currently lives in Brooklyn, New York, with his partner and child.

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