This reading explores the darker side, in the realms of death, sex, and religion. Novel excerpts from three writers include stories about sexual entanglement with a religious mentor (Blair Hurley), a post-mortem photographer searching for a lost history (Kris Waldherr), and a serial killer roaming the Chicago Stockyards (Claire van Winkle). Here is more about your readers for the night:

BLAIR HURLEY is the author of The Devoted, published by W.W. Norton, which was longlisted for The Center for Fiction’s First Novel Prize. Her work is published or forthcoming in The Georgia Review, Ninth Letter, Guernica, Paris Review Daily, West Branch, and elsewhere. She received a 2018 Pushcart Prize and scholarships from Bread Loaf and the Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts.

CLAIRE VAN WINKLE is a poet, essayist, and literary translator. She is the founder of the Rockaway Writers’ Workshop and teaches undergraduate English and writing at several CUNY and SUNY schools. In addition to her creative and academic pursuits, Claire also works as a writing therapist at the New York State Psychiatric Institute. Claire has been been the recipient of several honors and awards including the Queens College Foundation Scholarship for Poetry Writing & Literary Translation, an ALTA Travel Fellowship, an Academy of American Poets Prize, the Mary M. Fay Poetry Award, a Hunter College Memoir Prize, and the Lenore Lipstein Memorial Poetry Award. Her poetry has appeared in anthologies published by Black Lawrence Press and Rogue scholars, as well as in Sixfold and the American Journal of Poetry.

KRIS WALDHERR’s just-published debut novel The Lost History of Dreams is a Victorian-set reworking of the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice featuring a post-mortem photographer and a poet.The Lost History of Dreams received a starred review from Kirkus Reviews and was praised as “an unexpected delight” by Booklist. While writing Lost History, she received two VCCA fellowships and a Poets & Writers work in progress reading grant. Waldherr is also the author-illustrator of several nonfiction books including Bad Princess, Doomed Queens, and The Book of Goddesses. As a visual artist, Waldherr is the creator of the Goddess Tarot, which has over a quarter of a million copies in print. She lives in Brooklyn with her family.