Six Bridges Book Festival

Jared Lemus & Dr. Samantha Edmonds

PRESENTERS: Jared Lemus & Dr. Samantha Edmonds
BOOKS: Guatemalan Rhapsody & A Preponderance of Starry Beings
MODERATOR: Daniel Ford

About the authors:

Jared Lemus is the author of two works of fiction published with Ecco-HarperCollins: the short-story collection Guatemalan Rhapsody and a forthcoming novel. His work has appeared in the Atlantic, Story, the Pinch, and the Kenyon Review, among others. He holds an MFA from the University of Pittsburgh and is the Kenan Visiting Writer at UNC-Chapel Hill.

Samantha Edmonds is the author of the chapbooks The Space Poet and Pretty to Think So. Her work appears in the New York Times, Fourth Genre, Ninth Letter, Mississippi Review, and the Rumpus, among others. She is an assistant professor in the creative writing program at Berry College and lives in Rome, Georgia.

About the books:

A vibrant debut story collection—poignant, unflinching, and immersive—masterfully moving between sharp wit and profound tenderness, the short-story collection Guatemalan Rhapsody offers a kaleidoscopic portrait of an ever-changing country, the people who claim it as home, and those who no longer do. It explores how we journey from the circumstances that we are forged by, and whether the ability to change our fortunes lies in our own hands or in those of another.

Blending fairy tale and science fiction with the otherworldliness of adolescence, A Preponderance of Starry Beings is a short-story collection for anyone prone to gazing skyward. In seventeen genre-bending stories of the cosmos, Edmonds probes the experience of coming of age on the outskirts of the universe, whether that be a small Midwestern town or a distant galaxy, and of weighing earthly obligations against the vast promises of space. These stories invite us into a mundane and whimsical world of night islands, alien planets, small towns, and faith lost and found, where a safe landing matters less than taking the leap.

Sponsored by the University of Arkansas at Little Rock School of Literary and Performing Arts