Patricia Grace King discusses Those Who Vanish with Paulette Livers

Carmichael's is excited to host Patricia Grace King for her book, Those Who Vanish. She will be joined in conversation by Paulette Livers.
About this Event

About the Book:

Winner of the 2026 Drue Heinz Literature Prize
Taking place during the decades-long civil conflict, Those Who Vanish follows the stories of Guatemalan citizens and North American expats set on a collision course by war. Martyrs and missionaries, guerrillas and gringos are thrown together amid political violence. A peace worker shelters a rebel fighter. An exile returns to confront the legacy of her parents' murders. The Virgin Mary begins appearing above an elderly woman's stove. Set in a world of daily disappearances, the collection addresses a vital question: When all certainties are snatched away, what remains of lives, of memory, of faith?

About the Authors:

Patricia Grace King grew up in North Carolina and has since lived in Spain, Guatemala, and the UK, where she resides. Her work has won the Miami University Novella Prize, the Arts & Letters Fiction Prize, and the Florida Review’s Leiby Prize. Other stories have been published by Ploughshares, The Gettysburg Review, Narrative, and Nimrod. A former Carol Houck Smith Fellow at the University of Wisconsin, she has received additional support from the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, the Vermont Studio Center, and the British Library. Those Who Vanish is her first book.

Paulette Livers is a writer, artist, editor, and book designer. Her novel Cementville (Counterpoint Press, 2014) received the Elle Lettres Readers Prize and was a finalist for the Chicago Writers Association Book of the Year, the Kentucky Literary Award, and the Center for Fiction’s First Novel Prize. A MacDowell Fellow, she has been a resident at Artcroft, Ox-Bow, Ragdale, Virginia Center for Creative Arts, and Vermont Studio Center. Her work has been awarded the Meyerson Prize for Fiction and multiple honorable mentions, including the Center for the American West Fiction Prize, Bridport Prize, Hunger Mountain, and Red Hen Press Short Story Award, as well as grants from the Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs and the Illinois Arts Council. She is founding Creative Director at Mighty Sword Studio, a boutique design, editing, and writing studio helping publishers and writers bring their work to the hands of readers.