Virtual: Christine Sneed & Elizabeth McKenzie

Please join us for a virtual event to celebrate DIRECT SUNLIGHT by Christine Sneed and THE DOG OF THE NORTH by Elizabeth McKenzie!

This event is hosted on Zoom Webinar and registration is required.

About Direct Sunlight

A collection of twelve stories by award-winning author Christine Sneed

The stories in Direct Sunlight, award-winning author Christine Sneed’s latest, are inspired by the memorable strangeness of everyday life. The characters in these topically diverse tales experience events that bring the terms of their day-to-day lives and their relationships into focus in a way hitherto foreign to them.

The title story features two adult children learning of their father’s second family long after his death in the 9/11 terrorist attacks. “Mega Millions” explores the aftermath of a small-town midwestern factory employee’s enormous lottery win. In “Dear Kelly Bloom,” a young journalist takes on the role of advice columnist at a faltering Chicago newspaper around the time of the 2008 financial meltdown and soon finds himself tasked with replying to his own mother’s letter requesting guidance on family matters. In “The Monkey’s Uncle Louis,” a contentedly childless man tries to make sense of his sister’s decision to adopt a capuchin monkey after she and her husband find themselves unable to conceive a baby of their own.

The stories in Direct Sunlight rely on humor but are balanced by Sneed’s clear-eyed sobriety about the sorrows inherent in the human condition.

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About The Dog of the North

Penny Rush has problems. Her marriage is over; she’s quit her job. Her mother and stepfather went missing in the Australian outback five years ago; her mentally unbalanced father provokes her; her grandmother Dr. Pincer keeps experiments in the refrigerator and something worse in the woodshed. But Penny is a virtuoso at what’s possible when all else fails.

Elizabeth McKenzie, the National Book Award–nominated author of The Portable Veblen, follows Penny on her quest for a fresh start. There will be a road trip in the Dog of the North, an old van with gingham curtains, a piñata, and stiff brakes. There will be injury and peril. There will be a dog named Kweecoats and two brothers who may share a toupee. There will be questions: Why is a detective investigating her grandmother, and what is “the scintillator”? And can Penny recognize a good thing when it finally comes her way?

This slyly humorous, thoroughly winsome novel finds the purpose in life’s curveballs, insisting that even when we are painfully warped by those we love most, we can be brought closer to our truest selves.

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CHRISTINE SNEED is the author of three novels, Please Be Advised: A Novel in Memos, Paris, He Said, and Little Known Facts. Her two previous story collections are Portraits of a Few of the People I've Made Cry and The Virginity of Famous Men. She also edited and contributed to the anthology, Love in the Time of Time’s Up, which was released last fall. Sneed is also the recipient of the Chicago Public Library Foundation's 21st Century Award, the Society of Midland Authors Award, and she was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. Her stories have appeared in The Best American Short Stories and O. Henry Prize Stories, and numerous others. She is the faculty director of Northwestern University’s School of Professional Studies' graduate creative writing program and teaches for a variety of other writing programs. She lives in Pasadena, California.

Elizabeth McKenzie grew up in California and wrote letters to the editor of the Los Angeles Times about zoos, Nixon, plastic surgery, and other topics she was upset about as a child. Later she became assistant fiction editor at The Atlantic Monthly in Boston, then returned to California to work as an editor for the Chicago Quarterly Review and Catamaran Literary Reader. Her short fiction has appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Best American Nonrequired Reading, and has received a Pushcart Prize. She has published three novels. The Portable Veblen was longlisted for the National Book Award and was the silver medal winner for the 2017 California Book Award. Her latest, The Dog of the North, was recently longlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction.

Accessibility: This event will be hosted on Zoom Webinar, which does have Closed Caption capability. For questions or additional access needs for this event, please email events@womenandchildrenfirst.com.