Pittsburgh Launch! Madeline ffitch "Avalon, Rise" (w/Shaun Slifer)

We are ecstatic and grateful to host Appalachian author, Madeline ffitch, in celebration of her new, multifaceted novel "Avalon, Rise"!
About this Event

We are ecstatic and grateful to host Appalachian author, Madeline ffitch, in celebration of her new, multifaceted novel Avalon, Rise, "a blistering, multifaceted novel about collective action, being in community, and fighting for what’s right" (Kirkus Reviews). Madeline will be joined in coversation by Pittsburgh artist, author, and museum worker, Shaun Slifer.

From the acclaimed author of Stay and Fight comes an uproarious, unabashed novel of an Appalachian town, the diverse locals who make it home, an influx of white nationalists trying to take over, and the ways in which the battle brings out our light.

Ditched on the side of the road, two friends shelter for the night in a barn. When they wake, one comes face-to-face with his destiny—an antique letterpress, the Vandercook No. 4.

Woody and Leroi have been friends their whole lives. But as Leroi falls in with the collective that cooks every Sunday in the park, learning about traveler symbols and how to slice a cucumber, Woody starts to snort the pills he’s been selling. He makes his art: beautiful letterpress signs for protests, and business cards commissioned by a woman he knows as Stasia but whom others know to be the leader of a white nationalist movement. Stasia bought the barn with the Vandercook in it; she says Woody can use it anytime. What does she want in return?

Woody and Leroi are just two residents of this Appalachian town. Their lives intersect, often at the library, with a cast of delightfully eccentric individuals. Eloise, the town librarian and lifelong activist. The punks at Food Not Bombs. Sharon, a wry social worker. Emma, a mom trying really hard not to take out her anger on her kids. Amber, the health goddess who runs the Discipline Cafe. Sylvester, an unhoused man with a long history in town. Matt Mistelthwaite, a World War II veteran with his own connections to the Vandercook. When Stasia insists on hosting a European Heritage Rug Braiding workshop at the library, everyone’s lives will be upended.

In Avalon, Rise, an ensemble novel genuinely rooted in the collective, Madeline ffitch asks big questions and doesn’t look away from the answers.

SHAUN SLIFER is a multi-disciplinary artist, nonfiction author, and museum worker based in Pittsburgh. His creative practice fundamentally investigates memory, directly challenging the oppression of currently-dominant historical narratives, both social and ecological. Shaun regularly works in collaboration with artists and other specialists, and in collectively-structured groups. He has worked as the Creative Director at the West Virginia Mine Wars Museum since 2015, where he also serves as the lead designer with the Museum's community-based public history project . Shaun is a founding member of the Justseeds Artists’ Cooperative, and an original member of the now-disbanded Howling Mob Society. His investigative people’s history book, , was released on West Virginia University Press in March, 2021.

MADELINE FFITCH cofounded the punk theater company Missoula Oblongata and is part of the direct-action collective Appalachia Resist! Her writing has appeared in Harper’s, Granta, Tin House, Guernica, and elsewhere. She is the author of the story collection Valparaiso, Round the Horn and the novel Stay and Fight, a finalist for the PEN/Hemingway Award, the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, and the Lambda Literary Award.