Join us for a Stories & Sweets event on Tues., May 13th, 2014 at 7:00 pm at Fiction Addiction, with Upstate SC author George Singleton, “[the] unchallenged king of the comic Southern short story.”
His latest collection, Between Wrecks (Dzanc, paperback, $15.95, releases 5/13/14), takes readers on a raucous bar crawl through an America both startlingly familiar and hilariously absurd. We will be serving punch and homemade desserts.
There are two ticket choices: $10 or $16.91. The $10 ticket admits one and includes a $10 book voucher. The $16.91 ticket admits two and includes a copy of Between Wrecks. Tickets may be purchased at the door or in advance at http://www.bookyourlunch.com or by calling Fiction Addiction at 864-675-0540.
There’s a place just down the way where a trip to the salvage yard reveals infidelity and theft. There’s another where an unlicensed entomologist celebrates his freedom with a compulsive liar while a manhunt ensues on the streets outside. Places where a con man and his nephew sell stolen parachutes to veterans in case the ground beneath them should suddenly give way and where Chuck Norris’s face graces only the walls of the finest trailers. A place where tongues get left in rental cars and a place where everyone insists an absolute stranger is your boyhood friend.
In Between Wrecks, Singleton examines paranoia, fear, relentless “truths,” longstanding personal habits gone awry, and what it means to look toward a horizon that may or may not be a mirage.
Booklist says: “These 14 short stories are set in North Carolina and other southern states, feature people at the ends of their tethers, and are written with degrees of satire and irony….Admirers of southern writing as well as Singleton’s fans will enjoy this tour de force of comic writing.”
George Singleton is the author of two novels and five short story collections. He was born in Anaheim, California and lived there until he was seven. He then grew up in Greenwood, South Carolina. He graduated from Furman University in 1980 with a degree in philosophy, and from UNC-Greensboro with an MFA in creative writing. Singleton has taught English and fiction writing at Francis Marion College, the Fine Arts Center of Greenville County, and the South Carolina Governor’s School for the Arts and Humanities. He has been a visiting professor at the University of South Carolina and UNC-Wilmington, and has given readings and taught classes at a number of universities and secondary schools. He is a 2009 Guggenheim Fellow. He is currently the John C. Cobb Endowed Chair in the Humanities at Wofford College in Spartanburg, SC, where he teaches fiction writing.
George Singleton has published short stories in a variety of magazines and journals including The Atlantic Monthly, Harper’s Playboy, Southern Review, Glimmer Train, Esquire.com, and so on. His stories have been anthologized in eight issues of New Stories from the South, and also in 20 Over 40, Surreal South, Writers Harvest 2, They Write Among Us, and Behind the Short Story. His non-fiction has appeared in Bark and Oxford American, and has been anthologized in Best Food Writing 2005, Dog is My Co-Pilot, and Howl. He has published five collections of stories: These People Are Us, The Half-Mammals of Dixie, Why Dogs Chase Cars, Drowning in Gruel, Stray Decorum; and two novels: Novel and Work Shirts for Madmen.
He lives in Spartanburg, South Carolina.
If you cannot make the event, you can reserve a personalized copy of any of the author’s books by contacting Fiction Addiction in advance at 864-675-0540 or at [email protected].