Book Launch with Marguerite Sheffer and Maurice Carlos Ruffin

Join us Wednesday, November 6th at 6:30 pm to celebrate the launch of Marguerite Sheffer’s collection, The Man in the Banana Trees: Stories.

Marguerite will be in conversation with Maurice Carlos Ruffin.

The discussion and reading will be followed by an audience Q&A and a book signing.

$5 tickets include entrance to this engaging conversation and curated refreshments.

$20 tickets also include a signed copy of The Man in the Banana Trees: Stories.

“Haunting and hilarious, horrifying and heartwarming, this is short story gold. Marguerite Sheffer is the alchemist, reimagining and transmuting the form.” - John Vercher, author, Devil is Fine

The stories in The Man in the Banana Trees take place in the past, present, and future—from the American Gulf South to the orbit around Jupiter. We meet teachers and students, ghosts and aliens. An ice cream consultant in the year 2036 predicts a devastating flavor trend and a disgruntled New England waiter investigates a mysterious tanker crash. Although wildly varied in setting, length, and genre, a thread of the fantastic unites these stories, as characters struggle to understand that thing lurking at the edge of their perception: something sinister, or maybe—miraculous.

Marguerite Sheffer teaches courses in design thinking and speculative fiction at Tulane University, and is a founding member of Third Lantern Lit, a local writing collective, and the Nautilus and Wildcat Writing Groups. Sheffer lives in New Orleans, Louisiana.

Maurice Carlos Ruffin is the author of National Bestseller, The American Daughters, as well as The Ones Who Don’t Say They Love You, a One Book One New Orleans selection, which was longlisted for the Story Prize. His debut, We Cast a Shadow, was a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award, the Dayton Literary Peace Prize, and the PEN America Open Book Prize. All three books were New York Times Editor’s Choice selections. Ruffin is the winner of the Iowa Review Award in fiction and the Louisiana Writer Award. Ruffin is an associate professor of Creative Writing at Louisiana State University.

*If you have a service dog, please let us know ahead of time so we can put away our devious shop cat.*

Host or Publisher Blue Cypress Books