New Fiction: A Reading

Bruce Bauman is the author of the novel And the Word Was. His work has appeared in the Los Angeles Times, Salon, BOMB, Bookforum, and numerous anthologies and literary magazines. Bauman is an instructor in the CalArts MFA Writing Program and Critical Studies Department and has been Senior Editor of Black Clock literary magazine since its inception in 2003. His latest novel, Broken Sleep (Other Press Paperback Original) spans the 1940s to 2020s as it knits the stories of four characters into an indelible portrait of American culture.  When everyman Moses Teumer discovers that he has an aggressive form of leukemia, his search for a donor who can save him sets off a wild chain of events.  Encompassing a Pynchon-esque saga of rock music, sex, drugs, art, and politics, this novel is an unforgettable examination of the secrets we keep and the risks we take in the name of commandeering our own destinies.

Lisa Glatt is the author of the novel A Girl Becomes a Comma Like That and the short story collection The Apple's Bruise. Her poetry collections include Shelter and Monsters & Other Lovers. Glatt’s work has appeared in such magazines as Zoetrope: All-Story, Gulf Coast, Mississippi Review, Indiana Review, Pearl, and The Sun. In her latest novel, The Nakeds (Regan Arts), a hit-and-run accident sends the lives of both driver and victim into unforeseen trajectories in a family drama set against the backdrop of the sexual revolution and 1970s California.

Shanna Mahin is a high school dropout with a fierce desire to overcome what her 9th-grade English teacher predicted would be a lifetime of wasted potential. Now that she's achieved official late bloomer status, she's been a MacDowell Colony Fellow, a Norman Mailer Colony Fellow, and a PEN Center USA Emerging Voices Fellow, among others. Her debut novel is Oh! You Pretty Things (Dutton), a fast-paced and sharply funny work that dares to imagine what happens when we go over the top in a town of gilded excess. Jess Dunne is third-generation Hollywood, but her star on the boulevard has yet to materialize. Sure, she’s got a Santa Monica address and a working actress roommate, but with her nowhere barista job in a town that acknowledges zeroes only as a dress size, she’s a dead girl walking. Enter Jess’s mother—a failed actress who puts the strange in estrangement. She dives headlong into her daughter’s downward spiral, forcing Jess to muster all her spite and self-preservation to snag a career upgrade.