CANCELED

Writers’ Workshop graduate Thomas Dodson will read from No Use Pretending, winner of the Iowa Short Fiction Award, a collection that encompasses diverse genres, from ecologically informed realism to a Kafkaesque fairy tale, from fabulist “weird fiction” to an episode from The Odyssey that becomes a meditation on what distinguishes human beings from animals.

Says Margot Livesey, “Thomas Dodson is a writer wonderfully aware of the resources of fiction and the necessities of the world. His vividly imagined characters seldom act in their own best interests. They keep bees, fly drones, lose loved ones, and in general suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. But Dodson never loses sight of their complicated humanity—he is too canny a writer for that—and of their desire for something larger. In the midst of darkness there are moments of light, grace, and accidental wisdom. No Use Pretending is an arresting and exhilarating debut.”

Thomas Dodson is assistant professor and librarian at Southern Oregon University. He lives in Ashland, Oregon.

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