Writers’ Workshop graduates Abby Geni and Frances de Pontes Peebles will read from their new novels.

Geni will read from her novel, The Wildlands. "Geni's fascinat[ed] with the borders between human and animal… [and she] continues to create works of art with perfect voices that are simultaneously thrillers and meditations on nature. It is an incredible trick." —Kirkus Reviews

Geni is the author of The Lightkeepers and The Last Animal. She lives in Chicago.

De Pontes Peebles will read from her new novel The Air You Breathe. Born to wildly different worlds, Dores and Graça quickly bond over music. Traveling from Brazil's inland sugar plantations to the rowdy streets of Rio de Janeiro's famous Lapa neighborhood, and to Los Angeles during the Golden Age of Hollywood, The Air You Breathe is "a masterfully choreographed saga of friendship, envy, sacrifice and love—as soulful, layered, and intoxicating as the samba that reverberates from the page" (Georgia Hunter) and “[A] glittering, mesmerizing triumph of a novel.” (Alexander Chee)

De Pontes Peebles is the author of The Seamstress, winner of the James Michener-Copernicus Society of America Fellowship. She was born in Pernambuco, Brazil.