Stranger Than Fiction: Barbash, Howard, Scheeres, Zeff + More

Stranger Than Fiction is the Edinburgh Castle Pub’s new reading series, co-produced by Alan Black and Frances Stroh. The next edition, on Sunday, May 1, from 3-5pm, presents new work from Tom Barbash, Rachel Howard, Julia Scheeres, and Maury Zeff, alongside hosts Black and Stroh.

TOM BARBASH is the author of the novel The Last Good Chance, a collection of short stories Stay Up With Me, and the bestselling nonfiction work On Top of the World: Cantor Fitzgerald, Howard Lutnick & 9/11: A Story of Loss & Renewal. His fiction has been published in Tin House, Story magazine, The Virginia Quarterly Review and The Indiana Review. His criticism has appeared in the New York Times and the San Francisco Chronicle.

RACHEL HOWARD’S fiction and essays have appeared in Gulf Coast, the Hudson Review, ZYZZYVA, the New York Times, and the New Yorker Online. Her memoir The Lost Night, about her father’s unsolved murder, was described as “enthralling” by the New York Times. She runs the acclaimed reading series Yuba Lit in the Sierra Foothills.

JULIA SCHEERES is the author of the memoir JESUS LAND, which was a New York Times and London Times bestseller. She is also the author of A Thousand Lives: The Untold Story of Jonestown, which was recently optioned by a famous actor who wants to play Jim Jones (and whose name she can’t yet reveal).

MAURY ZEFF’S fiction and plays have been published in American Fiction 2012, Southern California Review, the Best of PlayGround 2014, and elsewhere. He has won a PlayGround Emerging Playwright Award and three PlayGround People’s Choice Awards. His play, I Wanna Be So Dated, about striving teenagers, helicopter parents, artistic expression, and the Ramones, premiered in March at the Vermont State Drama Festival. He has an MFA from the University of San Francisco and was a San Francisco Writers’ Grotto Fellow.

FRANCES STROH is the author of BEER MONEY: A Memoir of Privilege and Loss (out May 3 from HarperCollins), which chronicles her coming of age in the midst of the Stroh’s Beer family’s decline coupled with the unraveling of Detroit. Publisher’s Weekly described BEER MONEY as “A compelling memoir that vividly portrays the aching permanence of loss and the palpability of hope that accompanies starting over.”

ALAN BLACK works on “Notes From a Dive Bar” like a bartender tossing a drunk into the alleyway. Reckless, messy and all over the place, it never ends. The Penguin Corporation published his two books. Made in Glasgow, unmade in California.