Perfectly Queer Plus East Bay Book Reading “Queer Fiction Authors”

Visiting author James Han Mattson (The Lost Prayers of Ricky Graves) reads with local authors Wayne Goodman, Lori Ostlund, and Barbara Ridley at a Perfectly Queer Plus East Bay book reading, Thursday, May 17, 7:30pm to 8:30pm at Pegasus Books Downtown, 2349 Shattuck Ave., Berkeley. An author signing follows the readings. Free admission, free refreshments. Door prizes at 7:30!

ABOUT THE AUTHORS:
James Han Mattson was born in Seoul, Korea and raised in North Dakota. A Michener-Copernicus Fellowship recipient and graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, he has taught at the University of Iowa, the University of Cape Town, the University of Maryland, the George Washington University, and the University of California – Berkeley. His first novel The Lost Prayers of Ricky Graves was an Amazon Literature and Fiction Pick, an Amazon Best Book of the Month, a Publishers Lunch Bookseller Pick, a Kindle First Pick, a New York Post Required Reading, and was featured on NPR’s Weekend Edition with Scott Simon. He currently lives in Maryland.

Wayne Goodman has lived in the San Francisco Bay Area most of his life (with too many cats). He and his fiancé Rick May host Perfectly Queer, a reading series which holds monthly events in San Francisco and Oakland. Goodman also hosts Queer Words, a quarterly in-conversation series. His books include Better Angels, Britain’s Glory, Fortune’s Lot, The Last Great Hope, The Seed of Immortality, and Vanya Says Go! When not writing, he enjoys playing Gilded Age parlor music on the piano, with an emphasis on women, Gay, and Black composers.

Lori Ostlund’s story collection The Bigness of the World won the Flannery O’Connor Award, the California Book Award for First Fiction, the Edmund White Debut Fiction Award, and was a Lambda Finalist. Stories from it appeared in the Best American Short Stories and the PEN/O. Henry Prize Stories. Her second book, After the Parade (Scribner, 2015), was a Barnes & Noble Discover pick and a finalist for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize and the Ferro-Grumley Award. She is a teacher and lives in San Francisco with her wife and cats, though she spent her formative years in Minnesota, cat-less.

Barbara Ridley was born in England but has lived in California for over 35 years. After a successful career as a nurse practitioner, she is now focused on creative writing. Her work has appeared in journals such as Writers Workshop Review, Ars Medica, The Copperfield Review, Blood and Thunder, and Stoneboat. Her debut novel When It’s Over (She Writes Press, 2017) is set in Europe during World War Two and is based on her mother’s story as a Holocaust refugee. Barbara can be followed at www.barbararidley.com