Event

An 80s Short Fiction Reading

In The Soho Press Book of '80s Short Fiction, editor Dale Peck offers readers a fresh take on a seminal period in American history, when Ronald Reagan was president, the Cold War was rushing to its conclusion, and literature was searching for ways to move beyond the postmodern unease of the 1970s. Morally charged by newly politicized notions of identity but fraught with anxiety about a body whose fragility had been freshly emphasized by the AIDS epidemic, the 34 works gathered here are individually vivid, but taken as a body of work, they challenge the prevailing notion of the 80s as a time of aesthetic as well as financial maximalism. Formally inventive yet tightly controlled, they offer a more expansive, inclusive view of the eras literary accomplishments. Almost a third of the stories are out of print and unavailable elsewhere.The Soho Press Book of 80s Short Fiction is a daring reappraisal of a decade that is increasingly central to our culture.

This reading will feature Dale Peck, Brad Gooch and Mary Gaitskill