On Thursday November 5th Homer Public Library will host “The Once and Future Short Story,” a discussion with local writers Nancy Lord, Rich Chiappone and Nikki Ervice, moderated by Tom Kizzia. The event will provide a panel discussion on the topic of short stories. Tom Kizzia met with KBBI to share more details about the upcoming event:
“Homer's lucky to have so many published writers, you know, published short story writers, and this is a chance to come listen to them talk about their craft and how they got into it and what they love about it. And it's also a fast-changing world for writers having to find a place to publish your work shorter attention spans. How does that affect things? How does AI affect things? You know, there's just a lot in the outer world to talk about, as well as the thought process that goes on when they're sitting at their desks working on their stories. So I think we're just lucky in this town to have, you know, these well published authors sit down and talk about what they do, and this is a chance to come listen and ask questions. I think it's going to be a kind of perfect, perfect library event,” Kizzia said.
Kizzia spoke specifically about what the three writers will be speaking about at the event on Thursday, starting with Nancy Lord’s new collection Let them Tell You:
“It's her new and collected works. So you know she's published I think three collections of short stories before over her career, which includes novels and lots of nonfiction as well. But these were her short stories, and so they went through those three earlier collections and put together a selection of the best stories from those, and then added some new ones that she's written in recent years. So it's sort of new and selected, and published by the University of Alaska Press as a as part of their literary series. And Rich Chiappone has also got his uncommon weather recent collection that he's published again with that literary series through the University of Alaska Press, and these are stories that have appeared in various other journals, and some of them have fish in them, and some of them don't, and then we have a whole new generation represented with Nikki coming to talk about starting out in fiction, and and she's published a number of short stories in literary journals, and now has a novel coming out in just a week or so,” Kizzia said.
Thursday’s event will take place in the library’s reading lounge starting at 6 PM and books will be available for purchase at the event from the Homer Bookstore.
Reporting from Homer, this is Emilie Springer.
