Townsend Walker / 3 Women, 4 Towns, 5 Bodies

The Bindery hosts Townsend Walker in conversation withMartha Conway about his new short story collection, 3 Women, 4 Towns, 5 Bodies. Townsend will read a story from the collection and Martha will read a section from her recent novel, The Underground River. Please join us!

The twelve stories are rooted in foreign places, cemeteries, violence and strong women. The worlds the characters construct are unforgiving. Their paths cross in twisted and sometimes deadly ways. In the title novella, three women use seduction, wit, and weapons to master the men they meet. In Super Secrets two women are neighbors and lovers, until one is betrayed and extracts revenge. The ribald reverend in The Second Coming meets his match in 19 year-old Charity. On a darker note, a crazed horse and a storm at sea shatter a fragile love in Slashing at the Nets. Then, in Storm Painter an artist moves in with a writer, but their past destroys his third novel. Place is important. None other than an Italian detective would find a clue in a singular tortellini. The New York sniper would only be trained by the Israeli Defense Force.

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Townsend Walker’s novella La Ronde was published in 2015. His short stories have appeared in over seventy-five literary journals. “A Little Love, A Little Shove” and “Holding Tight” were nominated for PEN/O.Henry Awards. During a career in finance he wrote A Guide for Using the Foreign Exchange Market, Managing Risk with Derivatives, and Managing Lease Portfolios. Education: Stanford (economics and creative writing), New York University (economics and anthropology), Georgetown (political science).He lives in San Francisco and conducts a creative writing workshop at San Quentin Prison. His website is www.townsendwalker.com.

Martha Conway‘s most recent novel, The Underground River, was a New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice, and her first novel was nominated for an Edgar Award. She has won numerous awards for her historical fiction, including an Independent Publishers Award and the North American Book Award. Her short fiction has been published in the Iowa Review, The Carolina Quarterly, The Missouri Review, The Quarterly, and other journals, and she received a California Arts Council fellowship for Creative Writing. Martha teaches creative writing for Stanford University’s Continuing Studies Program and UC Berkeley Extension. She lives in San Francisco with her family.