Saturday, April 17
2:00 pm - 3:00 pm
The Blackstone Library is pleased to host author MaryEllen Beveridge for a discussion of her short story collection After the Hunger. Set mostly in New England, her stories explore the complexities of family life and their changing dynamics. You can read the full synopsis below:
The central figure in many of these stories is the psychically wounded World War II veteran who is absent. Here the definition of the family is changed, and its re-imagining remains problematic. Challenges are posed to characters’ ideas about self hood and their role as daughters, mothers, sisters, friends, wives and lovers. A major theme of the collection is the search for place—within the family, and within the larger context of the post-war, post-modern world. The search for place often involves a search for faith as well.
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About the Author:
MaryEllen Beveridge is an honors graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. Her short stories have appeared in literary magazines including Pembroke Magazine, The Carolina Quarterly, Other Voices, Notre Dame Review, Cottonwood, Crab Orchard Review, Louisiana Literature, and War, Literature & the Arts. She is a two-time nominee for a Pushcart Prize. A previous short story collection was a finalist for the Flannery O Connor Award for Short Fiction, and another was a semi-finalist for the Iowa Short Fiction Award. MaryEllen is a former member of the faculty at Emerson College, where she taught fiction writing and literature.