If the juxtapositions in the composite image feel a bit unsettling, that's appropriate, because the next All But True reading, on June 6 at 6 p.m.,  features two just-released novels about mass shootings. Both are by acclaimed writers. Both are tough and strong—yet they’re different in many ways.

For such a terrible subject, it may seem odd to turn to novels for insight. But fiction writers often have a way of cutting through the chatter and hysteria to expose deeper underlying truths about our psychology, our society, our illnesses.
 
IF WE HAD KNOWN by Elise Juska takes us to a small town in rural Maine, where Maggie Daley, a single mother and English professor, learns that a former student of hers has shot four people at a mall. Then a post on social media claims that an essay he wrote in her class contained red flags. Is she responsible? In the growing media storm she must make choices that threaten not only her own well-being but her daughter’s as well.
 
“A tender, whip-smart meditation on the origins and aftermath of tragedy. Here Juska asks us an important and quietly devastating question: In what ways are we responsible to and for each other?” —Carmen Maria Machado, author of HER BODY AND OTHER PARTIES
 
“Well-written, realistic, and suspenseful to the point of dread.” --KIRKUS REVIEWS
 
Tom McAllister’s HOW TO BE SAFE similarly focuses on the aftermath of a mass shooting, and the main character is also an accused educator—but the novel takes a radically different tone than Juska’s. Protagonist Anna Crawford has a long history with abusive men. A heavy drinker, she’s sardonic and slightly mad herself. When the town’s mania subjects her to jeers, threats, and relentless judgment, Anna’s response amounts to a wild and piercing feminist howl. There are many moments of exquisite dark humor as the novel dissects the hypocrisy of America’s gun culture.
 
“McAllister delivers here a portrait of a nation vibrating with failure and humiliation.… The writing sears—and reminds us of literature’s power to fill a void that no amount of inhaling the vapors of Twitter will satisfy.” —Lauren Mechling, NEW YORK TIMES
 
“A blistering, Swiftian portrait of a nation that has lost its moral center, this book is compelling from start to finish. Enthusiastically recommended for fans of literary fiction, psychological drama, and dystopian fiction.” --LIBRARY JOURNAL
 
The event includes author readings, discussion, book signings, and refreshments. The location is the wonderful Penn Book Center, 34th & Sansom Streets in West Philly, adjacent to the University of Pennsylvania.

Next up in the ALL BUT TRUE reading series:

SHORT AND STRANGE: Flash Fiction with a Surreal Twist
featuring Sebastian Castillo and Sharon White
Thursday, April 19, 2018, 7:00 to 9:00 p.m.
Penn Book Center, 130 S. 34th Street, Philadelphia

Both of these authors use the short-short-story form to explore surreal situations that bear a provocative resemblance to our "ordinary" world.

Sebastian Castillo's 49 VENEZUELAN NOVELS confounds readers' expectations by stripping the novel down to its barest bones. Each novel occupies a single page. Some consist of a single sentence. Yet Castillo draws on the power of innuendo, intimation, and absence to create narratives eerily rich in their sparseness. Castillo was born in Caracas, Venezuela, and grew up in New York. Said Blake Butler, author of 300,000,000, “Sebastian Castillo’s micro-fictional assemblages invoke a logical illogic wherein nothing is untrue or impossible, secrets have secrets, and any sentence can change the world.... A magical, medicinal mini-encyclopedia for our ongoing human rune.”

Sharon White, a multi-award-winning poet and author of creative nonfiction, turns to fiction with the inventive BOILING LAKE (ON VOYAGE), micro-tales of travel to the past, present, future--and other worlds. White’s exquisite prose and off-kilter juxtapositions turn even familiar territory strange and unsettling. “With mad singing in strange lands and familiar places, these tiny stories speak a language of dark lyricism,” says Amy Parkison, author of THE PETALS OF YOUR EYES. White's awards include include the Italo Calvino Prize in Fabulist Fiction, the Marguerite McGlinn Prize for Fiction from Philadelphia Stories, the Neil Shepard Prize in Fiction from Green Mountains Review, a Pennsylvania Council on the Arts Fellowship for Creative Nonfiction, the Leeway Foundation Award for Achievement, a Colorado Council on the Arts Fellowship, and a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship.

The event includes author readings, discussion, book signings, and (following our tradition) lots of snacks.

Note the new location: Penn Book Center, 34th & Sansom Streets in West Philly, adjacent to the University of Pennsylvania.

Congratulations to Erin Entrada Kelly, who appeared in the All But True series in September 2017.

The novel she read from, Hello, Universe, has just won the Newbery Medal for the outstanding children’s book of 2017!

Here's the news release:
http://ala.unikron.com/2018/

Coming next in the All But True series, on Thursday, November 16, 2017, at 7:00 p.m.: Generations of Immigrants, a program featuring novelists Rahul Mehta and Annie Liontas.

NO OTHER WORLD by RAHUL MEHTA is a coming-of-age story set in a small community in western New York. Kiran Shah, the American-born son of Indian immigrants, struggles to find both his cultural place and his sexual identity. His parents, meanwhile, go through their own difficult adaptations, and Kiran’s sister Preeti is traumatized by a racist boyfriend in an incident he thinks he could have mitigated. Haunted by guilt and shame, he travels to India, where he finds himself strangely affected by a teenage hijra, a member of India’s ancient transgender community. Under her influence, he begins to make sense of his troubled life.

“NO OTHER WORLD is deeply satisfying, a novel so moving that I worried about its main characters for weeks after I finished reading it. Rahul Mehta is a writer with astonishing emotional subtlety and generosity; I loved this beautiful book.” (Lauren Groff, author of FATES AND FURIES)

LET ME EXPLAIN YOU by ANNIE LIONTAS is an unforgettable novel about a Greek American family and its enigmatic patriarch. Stavros Stavros Mavrakis, Greek immigrant and proud owner of the Gala Diner, believes he has just ten days to live. As he prepares for his final hours, he sends a scathing email to his ex-wife and three grown daughters, outlining his wishes for how they each might better live their lives. With varying degrees of laughter and scorn, his family and friends dismiss his behavior, but when Stavros disappears, those closest to him are forced to confront the possibility of his death. The novel is told from multiple perspectives: Stavros himself, brimming with pride and cursing in broken English; his eldest daughter Stavroula, a talented chef in love with her boss’s daughter; her sister, the wounded but resilient Litza; and many other voices who compose a veritable Greek chorus.

“Pitch perfect ... very much alive” (SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE)
“The novel’s true heart is one filled with love and forgiveness” (MINNEAPOLIS STAR-TRIBUNE)
 
The event includes discussion, book signings, and free snacks.

Mighty Writers West is at 3861 Lancaster Avenue (corner of 39th Street) in West Philly. Phone: 267-244-4005.

The All But True series resumes on Friday, April 14, 7:00 p.m., at Mighty Writers West, 3861 Lancaster Ave. in West Philly. We'll be featuring the authors of two fine works of historical fiction.

The readers are Diane McKinney-Whetstone and Jim Remsen.

Diane McKinney-Whetstone is the acclaimed author of six novels, all set in Philadelphia. Her first five books spotlighted eras of Philly history from the 1940s through the 1990s. The latest, Lazaretto, from which she'll read on April 14, takes us back to the end of the Civil War. Abe Lincoln has just been assassinated. Two brothers, after being abused in an orphanage, get in trouble with the law when one retaliates against the injustice. A midwife has reluctantly given up a newborn baby to the machinations of the high-status people who want to hide the birth. Meanwhile, at the Lazaretto, the city's quarantine hospital, the African American staff are getting ready to celebrate a wedding. The characters and plot lines converge there in McKinney-Whetstone's typical spellbinding fashion.

Jim Remsen, longtime journalist and former Religion Editor for the Philadelphia Inquirer, will read from his middle-grades novel Visions of Teaoga. In a blend of history, suspense, and coming-of-age tale, a contemporary girl visits a seemingly out-of-the-way Pennsylvania town on a summer vacation and has close encounters with its amazing past, including the story of a Native American queen who fought British and French colonists to protect her people. The novel shifts between 1790 and today as it interlinks the two narratives. Remsen will also bring his latest book, Embattled Freedom, a nonfiction history for adults about another remote town in Pennsylvania that served as a station on the Underground Railroad. After finding refuge there, some of the fugitive slaves risked their necks by returning South to fight for the Union.

As always, the readings are open to all, we'll have complimentary refreshments, and the authors will be happy to autograph their books.

Because All But True is now part of the Second Fridays on Lancaster event series in West Philadelphia, we've begun doing announcements for the community newsletter. Here is the one for the upcoming reading on November 11, titled "Other Times, Other Worlds."

If you're interested, feel free to distribute this announcement or the larger flyer in our previous post to anyone else who might take a fancy to intelligent elephants, towers of living bone, or sci-fi/fantasy in general. (P.S. If you're a real fan of these authors' universes, it's okay to come to the reading wearing wings or an elephant costume.)

For Facebook updates, check the event page.