Ficton authors Lynn Crawford and Anne K. Yoder will present and read from their novels at Book Beat on Sunday, November 6 at 3:00 pm. The reading is open to the public and will be held at Book Beat, 26010 Greenfield in Oak Park.
“Lynn Crawford’s playful, genre-crossing spy novel Paula Regossy is a wide-ranging work that showcases the author’s ability to wear many stylistic hats, while directing a rich and varied narrative with control. She achieves these successes while rapidly changing the work’s points of view, genre, narrative format, and pacing. The novel is a world of its very own, and we readers get to share in Crawford’s unique vision. The novel’s chapters, as the author explains in the acknowledgements, were inspired by visiting various art spaces in Detroit, and provide a key for those who want to explore the deep background of Crawford’s work. But even without this knowledge, the novel stands on its own, allowing our interpretation to roam freely.” –Eric Maroney, Colorado State University
“Lynn Crawford understands better than any writer I know how profound, poignant, elegant meanings surface through our routines, our everyday lives. She is a true detective.”
—Evelyn Hampton, author of Famous Children and Famished Adults: Stories
“Paula Regossy doesn’t feel at all like fantasy or academic speculation. Although in it one might feel echoes of writers from J.G.Ballard to Samuel Beckett, Paula Regossy is very much Lynn Crawford’s own marvelous creation. And just as I am in awe of the world at large, I am in awe of Paula Regossy.
—Jose Padua, author of A Short History of Monsters
The online journal ? mile features an essay by Lynn Crawford on the evolution of Paula Regossy.
Signed copies of Paula Regossy are available online at the Book Beat gallery.
Peter Williams, Pussy Galore, 2013, oil on linen 30″ x 30″ Photograph: Tim Thayer; Courtesy Paul Kotula Projects, Ferndale, MI
A Note on The Enhancers/
Inspiration for the novel was drawn from Anne K. Yoder’s training as a pharmacist and her experience working an array of positions, from NYC hospitals to suburban pharmacy call centers. For Anne, The Enhancers provides an opening for conversation and consideration about the ways the pharnaco-industrial complex infiltrates our lives, how profitability stipulates so much about healthcare system and what services are offered, how chemicals/pharmaceuticals can be touted as cure-alls but also have their own consequences and side effects; how they can also be given as a way to avoid dealing with the root cause of an issue. It’s not all or nothing.
Praise for the Enhancers
“Fans of Ling Ma and Jennifer Egan, here is your next book. Anne K. Yoder, in a lyrical voice of the many, gives us a haunting tale of pharmacology and a story of boundaries: human, chemical and industrial. Where are those boundaries again? Where does a body start and end? Or, as Yoder puts it, How much information could one memory hold? In a text that is itself a wild, wonderfully written ride through a wormhole, The Enhancers thrills and horrifies with profound ramifications.”
–Samantha Hunt, author of The Unwritten Book and The Seas
“The Enhancers asks, “How do I distinguish between what’s me and what’s chemical?” Animated by the absurdity of a Yorgos Lanthimos film, The Enhancers is a wildly original and contemporary tale about chemical augmentation, memory, yearning, and loss. Imagine the fearlessness and wild imagination of Jenny Erpenbeck if she had a background in the pharmaceutical industry and you might come close to approximating the tremendous brilliance of Anne Yoder.”
–Patrick Cottrell, author of Sorry to Disrupt the Peace
“The Enhancers experiments with language and ideas the way its characters experiment with chemicals, leaving the reader dizzy with excitement, asking: What is a fact? What is natural (and can it be saved)? Is self-enhancement also self- erasure? In a world where every activity is regimented yet ever-changing outside of one’s control, Anne Yoder cautions to be careful what you wish for (especially since you’re always being watched and tested). My brain feels like a honeycomb full of bees after reading her latest work.”
—Sarah Gerard, author of True Love and Sunshine State
About the Authors:
Anne K. Yoder’s writing has appeared in Fence, BOMB, Tin House, NY Tyrant, and MAKE. She’s been recognized in Best American Nonrequired Reading and has published two poetry chapbooks. Yoder lives and works in Chicago, where she’s a staff writer for The Millions.
Fiction writer and art critic Lynn Crawford is a founding board member of Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit (MOCAD), a 2010 Kresge Literary Arts Fellow and a 2016 Rauschenberg Writing Fellow. Her books include Solow, Blow,Fortification Resort, a series of art-related sestinas, Simply Separate People and Simply Separate People, Two. Her latest novel (2016) is Shankus & Kitto : A Saga. Her work appears in various anthologies (Oulipo Compendium, Fetish, Brooklyn Rail, Fence) and journals (Art in America, Infinite Mile, Detroit Research, Hyperallergic, Tema Celeste, McSweeney’s, Lilies and Cannonballs, Parkett, Bookforum, Metro Times). Most recently she contributed a story, “TNW and Me” to The-N-Word, a monograph on African-American painter Peter Williams edited Ryan Standfest, and an essay to Detroit, The Dream is now, a collection of photographs of art, food and design by Michael Arnaud (Abrams Books). Lynn earned a MSW from New York University and has worked in various psychiatric, community, hospital, museum and school settings. She lives with her family north of Detroit.