The gripping, thought-provoking stories in Yxta Maya Murray’s latest collection find their inspiration in the headlines. Here, ordinary people negotiate tentative paths through wildfire, mass shootings, bureaucratic incompetence, and heedless government policies with vicious impacts on the innocent and helpless. A nurse volunteers to serve in catastrophe-stricken Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria and discovers that her skill and compassion are useless in the face of stubborn governmental inertia. An Environmental Protection Agency employee, whose agricultural-worker parents died after long exposure to a deadly pesticide, finds herself forced to find justifications for reversing regulations that had earlier banned the chemical. A Department of Education employee in a dystopic future America visits a highly praised charter school and discovers the horrific consequences of academic failure. A transgender trainer of beauty pageant contestants takes on a beautiful Latina for the Miss USA pageant and brings her to perfection and the brink of victory, only to discover that she has a fatal secret.
The characters in The World Doesn't Work That Way, but it Could grapple with the consequences of frightening attitudes and policies pervasive in the United States today. The stories explore not only our distressing human capacity for moral numbness in the face of evil, but also reveal our surprising stores of compassion and forgiveness. These brilliantly conceived and beautifully written stories are troubling yet irresistible mirrors of our time.
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Produced by Maddie Gobbo & Michael Kowaleski
Theme: "I Love All My Friends," a new, unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.
Visit https://www.skylightbooks.com/event for future offerings from the Skylight Books Events team.
SKYLIT: Rupert Thomson, "BARCELONA DREAMING"
SKYLIT: Carissa Dorson, "CONVERSATIONS WITH DAD" w/ Aline Smithson
SKYLIT: Ben Percy, "THE NINTH METAL"
SKYLIT: Grace Perry, "THE 2000S MADE ME GAY"
SKYLIT: Liz Brown, "TWILIGHT MAN" w/ Alex Ross
SKYLIT: "Katharine Coles, "THE STRANGER I BECOME"
SKYLIT: Daniel Oppenheimer, "FAR FROM RESPECTABLE"
SKYLIT: Lauren Aguirre, "THE MEMORY THIEF"
SKYLIT: Dahlia Schweitzer, "HAUNTED HOMES"
SKYLIT: Illana Masad, "ALL MY MOTHER'S LOVERS" + Jean Kyoung Frazier, "PIZZA GIRL"
SKYLIT: Anjali Enjeti, "THE PARTED EARTH"
SKYLIT: X LA Poets Group Read
SKYLIT: Sara Sligar, "TAKE ME APART" w/ Steph Cha
SKYLIT: Di Lebowitz, "THE MARKS LEFT ON HER"
SKYLIT: Annie Connole, "THE SPRING" w/ Yumi Sakugawa
SKYLIT: Gail Newman, "BLOOD MEMORY" w/ Amy Uyematsu
SKYLIT: Corey Rosen, "YOUR STORY, WELL TOLD"
SKYLIT: Jaya Saxena, "CRYSTAL CLEAR" w/ Helena Fitzgerald
HANDSELL: Ep. 19, Abigail Paxton, "Storyhouse Bookpub" w/ Lance Morgan
SKYLIT: Sarah Berman, "DON'T CALL IT A CULT" w/ Ashley Ray Harris
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