Thursday, January 28, 7:30
Double reading with Trinie Dalton and Aimee Bender
To launch two new books through Madras Press:
Trinie Dalton's 'Sweet Tomb' & Aimee Bender's 'The Third Elevator'
Sweet Tomb
By Trinie Dalton
Proceeds to benefit the Theodore Payne Foundation
I’ve foreseen my death since the day my Mom named me: Candy. It will happen after I’ve binged on my gingerbread walls, eaten the frosted windowpanes, and chewed hunks off the peppermint fireplace. The cause: Sweetheart Attack, a.k.a. Sugar Overdose. It’s a classic witch affliction. After all, a witch’s house isn’t solely built to lure starving children. They design them with their favorite treats, with tips from the Witch’s Home Journal. The magazine runs a column called 'Houses To Nibble At.' Last month’s winning house had the following caption beneath its photo: This devilishly delicious Witch’s House, with its broken candy glass path, cookie graveyard, licorice barbed-wire fence, and spooky hilltop shack with graham cracker roof, will delight a crowd of 20. I took the graveyard suggestion and have been busy baking tombstones to give my family some recognition. Everyone I’m related to is out back, mostly in the form of scattered ashes.
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In Sweet Tomb, Trinie Dalton tells the story of Candy, a candy-addicted witch who resents her inherited lifestyle. After a fire burns down her gingerbread house, she leaves the forest and ventures out in search of the excitement of a more urban environment. Along the way she encounters a self-mutilating puppet, tastes meat for the first time, and falls in love with Death, a skeletal woman with a shoe fetish.
Trinie Dalton is the author of the story collection Wide Eyed, an installment in Dennis Cooper’s 'Little House on the Bowery' series for Akashic Books, and of the novella A Unicorn is Born. She is also the co-editor of Dear New Girl or Whatever Your Name Is, an art book of confiscated notes from high school students, and the editor of MYTHTYM, a collection of essays, artwork, and miscellany on a variety of mythological and horror-related subjects.
'Dalton uses absurd, whimsical circumstances to reveal poignant truths about modern life.'
— NYLON magazine
‘Trinie Dalton is as radically original a young writer as I've ever come across: a post-punk, post-apocalyptic, post-everything sensibility, casting spells of willed innocence against the powers of darkness she knows terrifyingly well.’
— David Gates, author of Jernigan and Preston Falls
‘Trinie Dalton is an effortless purveyor of wonder, strangeness, and love. She is a writer of high spirits and unguarded vision.’
— Ben Marcus, author of Notable American Women and The Age of Wire and String
‘Trinie Dalton ... [puts] a fresh spin on the world, leading the reader into places never explored—sometimes dreamlike, sometimes nightmarish, always riveting. Her vision is wholly unique and memorable.’
— Jill McCorkle, author of The Cheer Leader and Creatures of Habit
The Third Elevator
By Aimee Bender
Proceeds to benefit InsideOUT Writers
The queen took a swan for her pet. The bird was white and large, with a body so puffed out and fluffy it looked just like a small cloud, only with legs, with a beak, and with bright beaded black eyes.
‘Throw him up in the air,’ said the queen, ‘and who knows who we’d fool.’
-----
The Third Elevator is the story of a swan, a bluebird, the curious family they form together, and the mysterious elevators in the center of their village — one that rises into the sky, one that opens into a forest, and one that descends underground. Other characters include a miner in search of something beyond the walls of his cave, a logger too gentle to chop trees, a team of kleptomaniacal dove nurses, a king with an appetite for turtles, and his queen, the swan’s first owner.
Aimee Bender is the author of the story collections The Girl in the Flammable Skirt, a New York Times Notable Book, and Willful Creatures, nominated by The Believer as one of the best books of the year, and of the novel An Invisible Sign of My Own, an L.A. Times pick of the year. Her stories have appeared in Granta, GQ, Harper’s, Tin House, McSweeney’s, The Paris Review, and many more publications, and have been heard on PRI’s This American Life and Selected Shorts. She is the recipient of two Pushcart prizes and in 2005 was nominated for the TipTree award.
‘Aimee Bender’s images explode, her words ignite. Watching her imagination catch fire remains a sustaining joy in my readerly life.’
— Alice Sebold, author of The Lovely Bones
‘Aimee Bender’s stories come as a revelation.’
— Jonathan Lethem, author of The Fortress of Solitude and Motherless Brooklyn
‘Bender uses language the way painters move paint, working squarely in the tradition of Gertrude Stein.’
— Alan Cheuse, NPR
‘To curl up with an Aimee Bender story is to thank heaven you ever learned to read in the first place.”
— Jessica Shaw, Entertainment Weekly
To launch two new books through Madras Press:
Trinie Dalton's 'Sweet Tomb' & Aimee Bender's 'The Third Elevator'
Sweet Tomb
By Trinie Dalton
Proceeds to benefit the Theodore Payne Foundation
I’ve foreseen my death since the day my Mom named me: Candy. It will happen after I’ve binged on my gingerbread walls, eaten the frosted windowpanes, and chewed hunks off the peppermint fireplace. The cause: Sweetheart Attack, a.k.a. Sugar Overdose. It’s a classic witch affliction. After all, a witch’s house isn’t solely built to lure starving children. They design them with their favorite treats, with tips from the Witch’s Home Journal. The magazine runs a column called 'Houses To Nibble At.' Last month’s winning house had the following caption beneath its photo: This devilishly delicious Witch’s House, with its broken candy glass path, cookie graveyard, licorice barbed-wire fence, and spooky hilltop shack with graham cracker roof, will delight a crowd of 20. I took the graveyard suggestion and have been busy baking tombstones to give my family some recognition. Everyone I’m related to is out back, mostly in the form of scattered ashes.
-----
In Sweet Tomb, Trinie Dalton tells the story of Candy, a candy-addicted witch who resents her inherited lifestyle. After a fire burns down her gingerbread house, she leaves the forest and ventures out in search of the excitement of a more urban environment. Along the way she encounters a self-mutilating puppet, tastes meat for the first time, and falls in love with Death, a skeletal woman with a shoe fetish.
Trinie Dalton is the author of the story collection Wide Eyed, an installment in Dennis Cooper’s 'Little House on the Bowery' series for Akashic Books, and of the novella A Unicorn is Born. She is also the co-editor of Dear New Girl or Whatever Your Name Is, an art book of confiscated notes from high school students, and the editor of MYTHTYM, a collection of essays, artwork, and miscellany on a variety of mythological and horror-related subjects.
'Dalton uses absurd, whimsical circumstances to reveal poignant truths about modern life.'
— NYLON magazine
‘Trinie Dalton is as radically original a young writer as I've ever come across: a post-punk, post-apocalyptic, post-everything sensibility, casting spells of willed innocence against the powers of darkness she knows terrifyingly well.’
— David Gates, author of Jernigan and Preston Falls
‘Trinie Dalton is an effortless purveyor of wonder, strangeness, and love. She is a writer of high spirits and unguarded vision.’
— Ben Marcus, author of Notable American Women and The Age of Wire and String
‘Trinie Dalton ... [puts] a fresh spin on the world, leading the reader into places never explored—sometimes dreamlike, sometimes nightmarish, always riveting. Her vision is wholly unique and memorable.’
— Jill McCorkle, author of The Cheer Leader and Creatures of Habit
The Third Elevator
By Aimee Bender
Proceeds to benefit InsideOUT Writers
The queen took a swan for her pet. The bird was white and large, with a body so puffed out and fluffy it looked just like a small cloud, only with legs, with a beak, and with bright beaded black eyes.
‘Throw him up in the air,’ said the queen, ‘and who knows who we’d fool.’
-----
The Third Elevator is the story of a swan, a bluebird, the curious family they form together, and the mysterious elevators in the center of their village — one that rises into the sky, one that opens into a forest, and one that descends underground. Other characters include a miner in search of something beyond the walls of his cave, a logger too gentle to chop trees, a team of kleptomaniacal dove nurses, a king with an appetite for turtles, and his queen, the swan’s first owner.
Aimee Bender is the author of the story collections The Girl in the Flammable Skirt, a New York Times Notable Book, and Willful Creatures, nominated by The Believer as one of the best books of the year, and of the novel An Invisible Sign of My Own, an L.A. Times pick of the year. Her stories have appeared in Granta, GQ, Harper’s, Tin House, McSweeney’s, The Paris Review, and many more publications, and have been heard on PRI’s This American Life and Selected Shorts. She is the recipient of two Pushcart prizes and in 2005 was nominated for the TipTree award.
‘Aimee Bender’s images explode, her words ignite. Watching her imagination catch fire remains a sustaining joy in my readerly life.’
— Alice Sebold, author of The Lovely Bones
‘Aimee Bender’s stories come as a revelation.’
— Jonathan Lethem, author of The Fortress of Solitude and Motherless Brooklyn
‘Bender uses language the way painters move paint, working squarely in the tradition of Gertrude Stein.’
— Alan Cheuse, NPR
‘To curl up with an Aimee Bender story is to thank heaven you ever learned to read in the first place.”
— Jessica Shaw, Entertainment Weekly
