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Literati is pleased to welcome Ken Foster in support of the his New York Times-bestselling memoir, The Dogs Who Found Me. We’re grateful to the Humane Society of Huron Valley for co-sponsoring this event, and we encourage you to donate dry dog and cat food to their wonderful Bountiful Bowls program, which helps people keep pets instead of surrendering them to a shelter. Food donations will be accepted at the event.

Now regarded as a classic in dog literature, Ken Foster’s memoir chronicles his journey from first-time dog owner to rescuer—and all the lessons and mistakes he made along the way. Bookended by the tragedies of 9/11 and Katrina, Foster finds that dogs open his eyes to the benefits of compassion, selflessness, and the chaotic beauty of living each day in the moment.

But more than Foster’s own story, readers remember the dogs. Among them are Duque, a Costa Rican stray; Brando, Foster’s first adopted dog and a supposed pit bull mix who outgrew his Manhattan studio apartment; Rocco, a clownish red pit bull whose owner mistakenly gives him away to the wrong person; Zephyr, a cheerful Rottweiler mix who awakens Foster by sitting on his chest when his heart stops working; and Sula, the tiny lost pit bull who showed up at Foster’s door one day and stayed.

Whether bearing witness to national tragedy, grieving the death of a friend, or dealing with his own mortality, Foster finds strength in his dogs, and in the reciprocal nature of rescue.

“Generosity and gratitude power this compelling account of the reciprocal nature of rescue. Ken Foster illuminates a profound lesson about saving a life: Doing it makes you able to do it.”–Amy Hempel, author of The Dog of the Marriage and Reasons to Live

Ken Foster is the editor of two anthologies, including Dog Culture, and the author ofDogs I Have Met and I’m a Good Dog. His collection of short stories, The Kind I’m Likely to Get, was a New York Times Notable Book. His work has appeared in The New York Times Book Review, The San Francisco Chronicle, McSweeney’s, andThe Believer. He has taught at The New School, Florida State University, and the University of Southern Mississippi. In 2008, he founded The Sula Foundation, which promotes responsible dog ownership among the pit bull population and sponsors education and outreach in the New Orleans area. He lives in New Orleans, with at least three dogs.

We are delighted to welcome Nathan Hill in support of The Nix, a 2016 BEA buzz pick and a staff pick here at Literati.

A Nix can take many forms. In Norwegian folklore, it is a spirit who sometimes appears as a white horse that steals children away. In Nathan Hill’s remarkable first novel, a Nix is anything you love that one day disappears, taking with it a piece of your heart. It’s 2011, and Samuel Andresen-Anderson—college professor, stalled writer—has a Nix of his own: his mother, Faye. He hasn’t seen her in decades, not since she abandoned the family when he was a boy. Now she’s reappeared, having committed an absurd crime that electrifies the nightly news, beguiles the internet, and inflames a politically divided country. The media paints Faye as a radical hippie with a sordid past, but as far as Samuel knows, his mother was an ordinary girl, who married her high-school sweetheart. Which version of his mother is true? Two facts are certain: she’s facing some serious charges, and she needs Samuel’s help.

To save her, Samuel will have to embark on his own journey, uncovering long-buried secrets about the woman he thought he knew, secrets that take him across generations and countries, and stretch all the way back to Norway, the original home of the mysterious Nix. In doing so, Samuel will not only confront Faye’s losses, but also his own lost love, and relearn everything he thought he knew about his mother, and himself. From the suburban Midwest to New York City to the 1968 riots that rocked Chicago, and beyond, The Nix explores—with sharp humor and a fierce tenderness—the resilience of love and home, even in times of radical change

“The Nix is a mother-son psychodrama with ghosts and politics, but it’s also a tragicomedy about anger and sanctimony in America. Even the minor characters go to extremes—among them, a Home Ec teacher from Hell and an unrepentant plagiarist with presidential aspirations. ‘A maestro of being awful,’ the son calls his mom. ‘Every memory is really a scar,’ she tells him. For this mother and son, disappointment is ‘the price of hope’—a cost they will both bear. Nathan Hill is a maestro of being terrific.” — John Irving

“Pay attention. This is what a Great American Novel looks like. The Nix is culturally relevant, politically charged, historically sweeping, sad, full of yearning, sometimes dark but mostly hilarious. Nathan Hill is a literary powerhouse who will deservedly earn many comparisons to John Irving and Jonathan Franzen.” — Benjamin Percy

“Once in a while a novel arrives at the perfect moment to reflect, skewer, and provide context for the world as we know it. This—now—is that novel.” — Christina Baker Kline

Nathan Hill‘s short stories have appeared in The Iowa Review, AGNI, Gulf Coast, The Denver Quarterly, Fugue, The Gettysburg Review, and many other journals. He was the winner of the annual Fiction Prize from the journal Fiction, a finalist for the Donald Barthelme Prize in Short Prose, a Pushcart Prize nominee, and the recipient of an Artist Grant from the Minnesota State Arts Board.

Literati is thrilled to launch Children of the New World by Alexander Weinstein.

Children of the New World introduces readers to a near-future world of social media implants, memory manufacturers, dangerously immersive virtual reality games, and frighteningly intuitive robots. Many of these characters live in a utopian future of instant connection and technological gratification that belies an unbridgeable human distance, while others inhabit a post-collapse landscape made primitive by disaster. Children of the New World grapples with our unease in this modern world and how our ever-growing dependence on new technologies has changed the shape of our society. Alexander Weinstein is a visionary new voice in speculative fiction for all of us who are fascinated by and terrified of what we might find on the horizon.

“Taken together, these stories present a fully-imagined vision of the future which will disturb you, provoke you, and make you feel alive. Weinstein is brilliant, incisive and fearless.” —Charles Yu, author of How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe

“In each of the gripping stories in Children of the New World, Alexander Weinstein offers a glimpse into an unnerving, not-so-distant, and all-too-possible future. Weinstein explores what-ifs with both wit and sensitivity, and his cautionary tales demand to be read (before it’s too late).” —Judy Budnitz, author of Nice Big American Baby

Alexander Weinstein is the Director of The Martha’s Vineyard Institute of Creative Writing and the author of the short story collection Children of the New World (Picador 2016). His fiction and translations have appeared in Cream City Review, Hayden’s Ferry Review, Notre-Dame Review, Pleiades, PRISM International, World Literature Today, and other journals. He is the recipient of a Sustainable Arts Foundation Award, and his fiction has been awarded the Lamar York, Gail Crump, Hamlin Garland, and New Millennium Prize. His stories have been nominated for Pushcart Prizes, and appear in the anthologies 2013 New Stories from the Midwest, and the 2014 & 2015 Lascaux Prize Stories. He is an Associate Professor of Creative Writing and a freelance editor, and leads fiction workshops in the United States and Europe.