Kirsten Sundberg Lunstrum with Becky Mandelbaum and Jessica Gigot

Welcome winner of 2017 Flannery O'Connor Award for Short Fiction, Kirsten Sundberg Lunstrum as she dives into her debut novel, Elita! Local authors Becky Mandelbaum and Jessica Gigot will be joining Lunstrum for an evening of mystery.

When Professor Bernadette Barton is called to consult on the curious case of a non-verbal girl surviving alone in the woods of a remote island in Puget Sound, the case soon becomes less scholarly than personal. As Bernadette strategizes to retain her career, she becomes inextricably bound to Atalanta's case.

Kirsten Sundberg Lunstrum's most recent collection of fiction, What We Do with the Wreckage, won the 2017 Flannery O'Connor Award for Short Fiction. Her two previous collections are Swimming with Strangers and This Life She's Chosen, which was a Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers title. Her short fiction has been the recipient of a PEN/O. Henry prize and has been widely published in journals, including The Sun, Ploughshares, and McSweeney's. Elita, a mystery, is her first novel. She lives near Seattle and teaches at The Bush School.

Becky Mandelbaum is the author of the novel The Bright Side Sanctuary for Animals and the story collection Bad Kansas, which received the Flannery O'Connor Award. Her work has received a Pushcart Prize and has appeared in The New Yorker, One Story, The Sun, The Georgia Review, McSweeney's Internet Tendency, and elsewhere. She lives in Bellingham, Washington.

Jessica Gigot is a poet, farmer, and writing coach. She lives on a little sheep farm in the Skagit Valley. Her second book of poems, Feeding Hour (Wandering Aengus Press, 2020) was a finalist for the 2021 Washington State Book Award. Jessica's writing and reviews appear in several publications, such as Orion, Ecotone, Terrain.org, and Poetry Northwest. She is currently a poetry editor for The Hopper. Her memoir, A Little Bit of Land, was published by Oregon State University Press in September 2022.

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