BINDERY: Micah Perks with Kate Schatz and Lucy Jane Bledsoe / True Love and Other Dreams of Miraculous Escape

The Bindery hosts a special evening with Micah Perks for her linked story collection True Love and Other Dreams of Miraculous Escape. Joining here are Kate Schatz (Rad Girls Can) and Lucy Jane Bledsoe (Lava Falls). Save the date!

Magical and funny, profound and seductive, the linked stories inTrue Love and Other Dreams of Miraculous Escape explore the life-bending power of love. In these interwoven lives, ardent desire meets a keen sense of reality deep in the heart of progressive California. When Sadie opens a funky bookstore in Santa Cruz, she is swept off her feet by Daniel, a true-blue romantic — athletic, bookish, from Santiago, Chile. Their connection is heady and erotic, and it echoes through the love lives around them: from Harry Houdini’s first encounter with the widow Winchester to the threatening intimacy between a wife and her brother to a grumpy teenager who inspires her divorced parents. Years later, when Sadie and Daniel take an overdue trip to Paris, their blended family doesn’t blend so well, sending them back to rediscover their roots. In these interconnected lives, the desire for passion is as strong as the desire to escape, and the terror of claustrophobic connection competes with the deepest human yearning. An intoxicating look at the complexity and simplicity of embracing and running from love. By the award-winning author of What Becomes Us.

“What an enticing cast of characters readers get to meet here! Micah Perks writes so well of love in many of its forms and stages, and she populates her book with such a memorable crew. No one is exempt from struggle and disappointment, and yet there is always a chance for transcendence, too.” – Aimee Bender, author of The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake andThe Color Master

“A writer whose stories are endearingly hard headed and tender hearted, and whose characters are so very alive that they practically escape off the page when you encounter them. This collection will cure what ails you.” – Kelly Link, author of Get In Trouble and Pretty Monsters

“The stories in True Love connect in the most satisfying way. You begin with a journalist who interviewed Harry Houdini about his night with lost souls in the Winchester House, a light story that gains weight from the six million Jews who did not escape. Then you have the chance to follow his granddaughter in her sad affair with a lover from Chile, a legacy. The stories are about escape in the deepest ways, from marriage and family and self and even from time and place, and the writing is beautiful, believable, disorienting. Sit down and watch the show, because I guarantee you don’t know what’s coming. . .” – David Vann, author of Bright Air Black and Aquarium

Micah Perks grew up in a log cabin on a commune in the Adirondack wilderness. She is the author of two other novels, What Becomes Us and We Are Gathered Here, and a memoir, Pagan Time. Her short stories and essays have won five Pushcart Prize nominations and appeared in Epoch, Zyzzyva, Tin House, The Toast, OZY and The Rumpus, amongst many journals and anthologies. She received her BA and MFA from Cornell University and now lives with her family in Santa Cruz where she co-directs the creative writing program at UCSC. More info and work at micahperks.com.

Kate Schatz is the New York Times-bestselling author of Rad American Women A-Z, Rad Women Worldwide, Rad Girls Can, and the illustrated journal My Rad Life. She’s a writer, activist, public speaker, and educator, who’s been passionate about both writing and politics since she was a kid. She’s a co-founder of Solidarity Sundays, a nationwide network of feminist activist groups, and she lives with her kids, cats, and partner on the island of Alameda. More at radgirlscan.com.

Lucy Jane Bledsoe‘s most recent novel, The Evolution of Love, came out in May 2018, and her collection of short fiction—a novella and stories at the intersection of wilderness, family, and survival—will be released in September 2018. Her work has won many awards, including a California Arts Council Fellowship in Literature, the Arts & Letters Fiction Prize, the American Library Association Stonewall Award, and two National Science Foundation Artists & Writers Fellowships.

Please note: This event will be at The Bindery, 1727 Haight.

This is an all ages event. The bar opens at 7, event begins at 7:30pm.

RSVP appreciated but not required.

If you cannot attend the event but would like to requeset a signed copy of True Love and/or any of the authors’ books, order below and put your request in the comments field.