Perfectly Queer Fall Fiction

Novelists Laura J. Merrell, Kate Jessica Raphael, and Hilary A. Zaid read from new fiction at Perfectly Queer Fall Fiction Monday, October 10, 7pm at Dog Eared Books Castro, 489 Castro St. in San Francisco. Free admission, door prizes, and refreshments. A book signing will follow the readings.

Laura J. Merrell grew up in southeast Indiana during the sad-sack seventies and anal eighties. During her senior year, she was voted “girl most likely to be locked in the attic by her relatives.” About her writing, Laura says, “I’ve written ever since I knew how to because I’m a pathological storyteller.” Her blog is blackwhitepress.wordpress.com. In her novel The Hedge Tree, the year is 1972, Tricky Dick is in the White House, and four-year-old Charity has managed to offend the better part of Roosevelt County, Indiana, by not crying at her mother’s funeral. Charity grows into a random weed that can’t find a squat in the garden. But, if the entire world is outside the garden, maybe it’s not all bad.

Kate Jessica Raphael is a feminist, queer activist, writer, and radio journalist, who makes her living as a law firm word processor. She lived in Palestine for eighteen months as a member of the International Women’s Peace Service and spent five weeks in an Israeli prison for her activism. In 2011, she won a residency at Hedgebrook writer’s colony. She has contributed footage to several films about Palestine and was featured in the film “Shutdown: The Rise and Fall of Direct Action to Stop the War.” Her debut novel Murder Under The Bridge: A Palestine Mystery won the Independent Publisher Book Awards (IPPY) silver medal for mystery. It is the first in a series. Visit her website: www.kateraphael.com.

Hilary A. Zaid is an alumna of the Tin House and Squaw Valley writers workshops. Her short fiction has appeared in Lilith Magazine, The Southwest Review, The UTNE Reader and CALYX, among other periodicals. Her story “My Triple X Valentine’s at the Far Point Senior Villas” will be the feature story in the October 19 issue of Amazon’s Day One, and her fiction is also forthcoming in the winter issue of The Tahoma Literary Review. Her prose chapbook The Dark Between the Stars was selected as the BLOOM Literary Magazine chapbook winner by judge Lucy Jane Bledsoe. See author website at www.hilaryzaid.com.