Author Abbey Mei Otis to give a reading on November 21 for the Dillon Johnston Writers Reading Series
Abbey Mei Otis, author of Alien Virus Love Disaster, will give a reading for the Dillon Johnston Writers Reading Series on Thursday, November 21, 2019 at 6 p.m. in the ZSR Library Auditorium (404). The reading, which is free and open to the public, will be followed by a brief reception and book signing.
Abbey Mei Otis is a writer, a teaching artist, a storyteller, and a firestarter raised in the woods of North Carolina. She loves people and art forms on the margins. Her story collection, Alien Virus Love Disaster (Small Beer Press) was a finalist for the 2019 Philip K. Dick Award and the Neukom Literary Arts Award for Speculative Fiction.
About Alien Virus Love Disaster:
Abbey Mei Otis’s short stories are contemporary fiction at its strongest: taking apart the supposed equality that is clearly just not there, putting humans under an alien microscope, putting humans under government control, putting kids from the moon into a small beach town and then the putting the rest of the town under the microscope as they react in ways we hope they would, and then, of course, in ways we’d hope they don’t.
Otis has long been fascinated in using strange situations to explore dynamics of power, oppression, and grief, and the twelve stories collected here are at once a striking indictment of the present and a powerful warning about the future.
The Dillon Johnston Writers Reading Series, named after the founder of Wake Forest University Press, brings to campus established and emerging fiction writers, poets, and writers of creative nonfiction each year to give literary readings and visit creative writing workshops in the Creative Writing Minor and other courses at Wake Forest. The literary readings are followed by a book signing and reception.
Categories: Department Events, Dillon Johnston Writers Reading Series