The phrase "ordinary people" took on special literary meaning with Judith Guest's novel of that name in 1976. Since then, many writers have grappled with an underlying question: to what extent can fiction succeed in conveying truly ordinary folk without putting us ordinary readers to sleep?

The key, of course, is to find the extraordinary in the ordinary, and that's the great achievement of the two novelists who will visit the All But True series for a virtual event on July 1 at 6:30 p.m.

On the outside, the aged Ms. Hazel Hicks could be taken for a stereotype—what in her day would have been called a spinster. Yet, as David Huddle reveals in his novel Hazel, she’s the most remarkable person in her small Vermont town. With fictional techniques as varied as Hazel’s personality quirks, the book explores her long life from multiple angles. "Hazel’s would seem to be the life story of one who has no life," says novelist Castle Freeman, Jr. "Nevertheless, owing to her creator’s utterly assured, sympathetic, multifaceted storytelling, she is never a tragic figure, or even a pitiable one. Rather, she appears with the contradictions, self-inflicted wounds (and blessings) the reader recognizes as belonging to life."

In The Nature of Remains, Ginger Eager portrays multiple characters in a hardscrabble Georgia town. This book was selected for the AWP Award Series in the Novel, and it's easy to understand why. Eager takes us  below the small-town surface to see class struggles, gender discrimination, domestic violence—all the "typical" problems of contemporary American life. Yet the characters emerge with an individuality that makes us root for them even when they’re clearly in the wrong. Novelist Paula McLain compares this book to "the wrenching simplicity of Kent Haruf and the dark southern lyricism of Daniel Woodrell."

A long-time teacher at Bread Loaf and the University of Vermont, David Huddle is the acclaimed author of more than 20 books—poetry, stories, essays, and longer fiction. His work has appeared in The New Yorker, Harper's, The New York Times Magazine, and The Best American Short Stories, and he has been awarded two NEA fellowships.

Ginger Eager’s short fiction, reviews, and personal essays have been published in The Georgia Review, Bellevue Literary Review, Jabberwock Review, and elsewhere. Her short fiction has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and shortlisted in The Best American Nonrequired Reading series.

This virtual event is sponsored by A Novel Idea on Passyunk, one of Philly's great indie bookstores. To register for the event, go here.

We now have the registration link set up for the upcoming All But True virtual event at 6 p.m. on November 30. Click here to register.

The suggested (not required) $5 donation is to benefit our wonderful host bookstore, A Novel Idea on Passyunk, which has managed to survive the pandemic with aplomb and good cheer.

It's been a while since our last event! A little thing (actually a microscopic thing) called a virus got in the way, and then our host bookstore went out of business during the pandemic. But we've overcome all that, and now the All But True series is back, virtually, with the assistance of A Novel Idea on Passyunk, which besides being a great idea is also a wonderful indie bookstore.
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The next event, online, is on November 30 at 6:00 p.m. Called Past Present: Time Travel & Historical Fiction for Middle Grade Readers, it features debut novelists Nicole Valentine and Jennifer Robin Barr. Info about registering to join the event will come soon. Meanwhile, here's a description of the two featured books:

In Nicole Valentine’s A Time Traveler’s Theory of Relativity, 12-year-old Finn copes with abandonment and grief by clinging to concrete facts in his physics books, until he learns that the women in his family are Travelers, able to move back and forth in time. His mom is trapped somewhere in the timeline, and she’s left Finn a portal to find her, if only he can leap beyond logic.

Goodbye, Mr. Spalding, Jennifer Robin Barr’s middle grade debut, tells the story of Jimmy and Lola, two enterprising 12-year-olds in Depression-era Philadelphia, who conspire to stop a wall from being built at Shibe Park—a wall that would block their rooftop view of Athletics’ games and cut into their family’s incomes. But the effort strains the friendship, and the pair must work to rebuild their relationship.

Nicole Valentine earned her MFA in Writing for Children and Young Adults from the Vermont College of Fine Arts. She teaches writing workshops for children’s writers at the Highlights Foundation in Honesdale, Pennsylvania. She was also the founding Chief Technology Officer of Figment.com, an innovative website for teen fiction writers and readers, which sold to Random House in 2013. (Author photo by Nina Pomeroy Photography.)

On Thursday, December 12, 2019, 6:00 p.m., the All But True series presents two spectacular books of flash fiction.

In her debut fiction collection, FAMILYISM, Tori Bond explores the weird moments that make up family life. These very brief stories, averaging less than three pages, offer a unique blend of irony and tenderness. We meet a “sweet sadistic” bartender lonely for his wife; a couple arguing about the lack of verbs in their relationship; a wife who may have left her identity in the refrigerator, and another who contemplates sex with a stranger who happens to be her husband.

“Bond knows the vagaries of the human heart and explores it with warmth and wit and savage intelligence.”
—Kathy Fish, author of WILD LIFE

Dedicated to “those who don’t quite fit in,” Nathan Alling Long’s collection of 50 flash fictions, THE ORIGIN OF DOUBT (a finalist in the 2019 Lambda Literary Awards), brings us a postmodern collage of searchers, outcasts, travelers, immigrants, lovers and parents—doubters of all ages. The stories reveal the subtle currents of longing, anger, and hope hidden beneath our ordinary conversations.

“Each story is a gem, a glimpse into moments of yearning and unexpected perception, instants that many of us might otherwise miss.... These are stories of male and female desire, of love and longing and loss. They are told to us like secrets, each simple moment a revelation that generates surprise and wonder.”
—Patricia Smith, author of THE YEAR OF NEEDY GIRLS

“[Long’s] stories, intense and sensual, demand repeated reading. Like prayers, they trigger reflection.”
—Julia MacDonnell, author of MIMI MALLOY, AT LAST!

The event includes author readings, discussion, book signings, and free refreshments.

The venue, as usual, is the lovely bookstore at 130 S. 34th Street in Philadelphia. This was Penn Book Center, but the store has a new name and logo, reflecting its new owners and commitment to the community: People's Books & Culture.

A lively discussion of speculative fiction last night during the All But True reading series at Penn Book Center. Authors A.C. Wise (left) and Sarah Pinsker shared their recent work and then engaged with an audience of 25-30 enthusiastic readers and writers. The event was hosted by Miriam Seidel.

(Apologies for the lousy camera. Gotta put out some bucks for a new phone.)

We'll soon be posting details of the next reading, December 12, with flash fiction authors Tori Bond and Nathan Alling Long.

Just in time for Halloween, the All But True series presents two new and provocative novels, by authors A.C. Wise and Sarah Pinsker, that explore the frightful things that may lurk closer than we realize.

SARAH PINSKER’s near-future debut novel, A SONG FOR A NEW DAY, follows two women: Luce, a musician who can’t perform openly since public gatherings have been banned, and Rosemary, who’s too young to remember how it was Before: before the mass epidemic and violence that led to the circumscribed and digitized world she lives in now. The story celebrates the connective power of live music as opposed to virtual performances, and person-to-person as opposed to digital connection—a dichotomy all too familiar to us even now. This novel is one of Publishers Weekly’s “Most Anticipated Books of Fall 2019,” and Kirkus Reviews called the author “a rising star in the world of speculative fiction.”

In A.C. WISE’s CATFISH LULLABY, the back-country Louisiana bayou town of Lewis carries dark secrets in its past. When Caleb grows up to become the town’s young sheriff, he’s called on to try to untangle its mysteries, including the disturbing legend of Catfish John, a monstrous swamp creature, and whether Caleb’s strange, fragile neighbor Cere can overcome what appears to be her family’s evil destiny. Wise gives voice to the unheard with language that sears and soars in this tale of “cosmic horror.” Says Mike Allen, a World Fantasy Award–nominated author, "CATFISH LULLABY demonstrates the many ways saviors and devils can occupy the same body.”

The event includes readings, discussion, book signings, and free snacks. 

Is it just us, or does it seem like the entire U.S. culture lacks maturity? Why are social media, politics, TV, even sometimes academia so ultra-juvenile? [Note to self: Do not refer to the White House.]
 
In the next installment of the All But True series, on Wednesday, March 6, 2019, two grown-up authors depict the lives of protagonists who struggle to reach emotional maturity even long after they can buy a legal drink.
 
In NONE OF THE ABOVE, author Michael Cocchiarale gives us 27 years in the life of an earnest Midwesterner, Increase “Ink” Alt, from childhood into his thirties. Like so many of us, Ink has trouble figuring out where he fits in the world. He constantly struggles to keep up with more sophisticated peers, and yet the reader sees that most of them aren’t good role models for him. Even when Ink returns to his hometown as a highly educated adult, he still has much to learn about himself. Trials and traumas put his maturity to the test in ways he never expected.
 
In THE MINORS by Chris Ludovici, both protagonists have to work on their maturity. One is Samantha “Sam” Heller, a teenager whose father has left to start a new job. Supposedly the family will join him soon, but the situation gets complicated, in part because of Nick Rogers, a 28-year-old contractor hired to fix up the house before it’s put on the market. Nick, a failed minor-league baseball player and habitual screw-up, gets drawn into being a confidant to the mother and a substitute dad for Sam and her younger brother—challenging roles for which he’s not at all prepared. In this novel all the characters need to grow up, and the author describes their difficult paths—full of betrayals, angst, and a few bloody knuckles—with both insight and compassion.

By coincidence, both of these books are published by Unsolicited Press in Portland, Oregon. You may want to check out their website.
 
The program starts at 6:30 p.m. at Penn Book Center, 34th & Sansom Streets in West Philly, adjacent to the University of Pennsylvania. As always, the event includes author readings, discussion, book signings, and free refreshments.
 
If we aren’t mature after this event, we will go home and listen to NPR.

Religion and spiritual tradition, and the way they affect our identities, are difficult subjects to tackle in fiction. But the January 30 All But True reading features two novels that do exactly that, in very different ways.

In Faint Promise of Rain, Anjali Mitter Duva takes us to the Rajasthan desert in 1554. On a rare night of rain, a daughter, Adhira, is born to a family of Hindu temple dancers. Fearing a bleak future, her father puts his faith in tradition: he insists Adhira “marry” the temple deity and give herself to a wealthy patron. But after one terrible evening, she makes a life-altering choice. Filled with the sounds, sights, and flavors of the Indian desert, Faint Promise of Rain is the story of a family caught between art, duty, and fear in a changing world. The novel was shortlisted for the William Saroyan International Prize for Fiction and the Chaucer Award for Historical Fiction.

“Describes the sacred dances so vividly that the reader can almost hear the dancers’ feet hitting the floor and the tinkling of ankle bells.” —Library Journal

In They: A Biblical Tale of Secret Genders, Janet Mason offers characters from the Hebrew Bible—reinterpreted. Tamar lives with her pet camel in the desert, content with her life and happily barren. But her twin sister, Tabitha, becomes pregnant after seducing a muscular young shepherd. Tamar plots with Tabitha to trick the patriarch Judah into believing that the baby is his so that the mother can have status in society rather than being burnt at the stake. Then Tabitha gives birth to twins, who are both intersex. As Auntie Tamar becomes deeply involved in the children’s lives, the story’s sly humor sheds light on our own often-complex identities.

Janet Mason’s previous book, Tea Leaves, a memoir of mothers and daughters (Bella Books, 2012), received a Goldie Award and was chosen by the American Library Association for its 2013 Over the Rainbow list. Janet is also the author of three books of poetry.

The program starts at 6:30 p.m. at Penn Book Center, 34th & Sansom Streets in West Philly, adjacent to the University of Pennsylvania. The event includes author readings, discussion, book signings, and refreshments.

NEW DATE!
Tuesday, December 11, 2018, 6 p.m.
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​Just in time for holiday shopping, the All But True series returns with two authors who specialize in magical thrillers for young adults.

In Nova Ren Suma’s A Room Away from the Wolves, Bina is on the road, with an old suitcase, a black eye, and a humming sense of betrayal. She’s fleeing trouble at home including two hostile stepsisters, and heading for a young women’s residence in Greenwich Village. But Catherine House has its own tragic history and dark, magical secrets, and once there, Bina must struggle to untangle the truths and lies of her own past. Heart-pounding and atmospheric, this is an updated gothic ghost story from a #1 New York Times bestselling author.

In The Spy with the Red Balloon by Katherine Locke, Ilse and Wolf Klein share a secret ability to work magic with their blood. The brother and sister are blackmailed into using their gifts during World War II—Ilse to help develop the atomic bomb in the US, and Wolf to sabotage Germany’s nuclear program. Loyalties and identities are tested in this sweeping, fast-paced fantasy and thriller that bravely explores the tensions at the dawn of the nuclear age—a companion book to Locke’s award-winning The Girl with the Red Balloon.

In a world that seems too absurd to be true, is there still a use for satire?

In the September 2018 All But True event (Wednesday, 9/26, 6 p.m.), two gifted authors take cutting looks at contemporary life. Their books alternate satire and poignancy, deeply felt scenes and laugh-out-loud passages. They delve into both the mysteries and the ridiculousness of our skewed contemporary life.
 
THE GLITCH by Elisabeth Cohen is a send-up of tech life and its frenzied have-it-all culture. Shelley Stone, a super-efficient Silicon Valley CEO and mother of two, thinks she has everything under control. She takes power naps while waiting in line and schedules sex with her husband for when they’re already changing clothes. But when she meets a young woman also named Shelley Stone who has the exact same scar on her shoulder, Shelley has to wonder: Is she finally buckling under the pressure?

​Kathy Anderson’s BULL AND OTHER STORIES (winner of the Autumn House Fiction Prize) mixes dark humor with raw moments of pain and misunderstanding. Focusing on characters whose predicaments are typically ignored—a funeral driver, a lesbian power couple, a boy upset that his father has become a woman—she pulls us into situations that are just far enough beyond the conventional to intrigue and disturb us. Are these lives tipping into farce or tragedy—or both?

The event includes author readings, discussion, book signings, and refreshments. The venue is the Penn Book Center, 34th & Sansom Streets in West Philly, adjacent to the University of Pennsylvania.