Micah Mattix with The Blackbird + Blue Walls: A Double Book Launch (Online)

The Blackbird + Blue Walls: A Virtual Double Book Launch and Conversation with Micah Mattix

*Sally Thomas will read from .

*Joshua Hren will read from his novel .

*Micah Mattix, Poetry Editor at First Things and Professor of English at Regent University

will host and moderate the ensuing conversation.

—— —— —— —— —— —— —— —— —— —— —— —— —— —— —— —— ——

The Blackbird and Other Stories

by Sally Thomas

In these nine stories, the human condition presents itself in dramas of loss, betrayal and breakage, the shortcomings and strangeness of love in a fallen world. In scenes that shift from the Blue Ridge Mountains to the West Tennessee countryside, from the otherworldliness of the Great Salt Lake to the mercurial waters of the Alabama Gulf Coast, families fray and fragment and whistle in the dark. Mothers mourn their lost children. Children flounder in the backwash of their parents’ chaos and despair. Old lovers take stock of each other. While married couples offer each other thin comfort in grief, divorced couples circle each other warily, aware that despite their separation, their lives remain forever entangled. Psychologists take refuge in therapeutic language, even as that language fails to articulate the very truths the heart cries out to confront. Although houses figure as places of refuge and repositories of memory, they offer only fragile shelter. Stored-up memories lie in ambush. Characters bent by the weight of the past work out their tangled futures against the backdrop of a large, mysterious universe, shining with a presence which signals itself in storm, birdsong, mysterious footsteps, and the evocative smoke of distant wildfires, whose smell brings hidden things to light.

“These are quiet, introspective, poetic fictions that have the intimacy of secrets. Sally Thomas’s characters are familiar, faith-filled, likable, and unextreme, each exhibiting the minor heroism of doing the best they can.”

—Ron Hansen, author of the short story collection Nebraska, the novel Mariette in Ecstasy, and many more

“Like Eudora Welty, Sally Thomas uses a small scale to great effect in The Blackbird and Other Stories, capturing the strange movements of the human heart with astonishing subtlety. It is one of the finest collections of short fiction in years, and Thomas is quietly establishing herself as one of our finest writers.”

—Micah Mattix, Poetry Editor at First Things and Professor of English at Regent University

—— —— —— —— —— —— —— —— —— —— —— —— —— —— —— —— ——

Blue Walls Falling Down: A Novel

by Joshua Hren

Stella Tęsknota was ready to marry Blake Yourrick, the troubled if earnest protagonist of Infinite Regress. In this stand-alone novel (and loose sequel), set after Blake abruptly—and inexplicably—breaks off their engagement, Stella throws herself into a tough South Chicago teaching assignment. There she meets Peter Clavier (P.C.), a psychologist-activist whose uncle—a pastor—has long prophesied for Peter a future of otherworldly greatness. As Stella draws out Peter’s past, the novel follows P.C.’s trajectory from a Cabrini-Green childhood to surreal stardom in the orbit of underwritten radical politics.

When his boss offers Peter a marquee microphone and he moves to D.C., Stella returns home to Milwaukee in search of steady ground. She finds her self-sacrificing father hosting basement meetings that mix nostalgia and conspiracy. In the confluence of comfort and catastrophe, Stella is invited to wager on faith.

“Joshua Hren has crafted a novel that is as spiritually challenging as it is beautifully written. Blue Walls Falling Down delves into the complexities of human existence, offering a poignant meditation on the search for meaning in a world often overshadowed by loss and uncertainty. This is a novel that will linger in the hearts and minds of readers long after the final page.”

—Luke Burgis, author of Wanting: The Power of Mimetic Desire in Everyday Life

“Joshua Hren’s Blue Walls Falling Down conveys the loneliness, desperation, and extremism that afflict America in our time. The novel’s memorable characters yearn for family, seek forgiveness, and search for justice. Synthesizing a fascinating array of influences (from Joseph Conrad to Jack Kerouac, Flannery O’Connor to Ralph Ellison and America’s jazz masters) and exploring the peripheries of urban poverty and political radicalism, Hren has written an ambitious and poetic tragedy.”

—Christopher J. Scalia, ed. Scalia Speaks and On Faith

Host or Publisher Wiseblood Books