Joshua Ferris and Victor Lavalle (2011)

On March 25th 2011 two talented contemporary authors read from their current works in this PEN/Faulkner fiction reading at Folger Shakespeare Library. National Book Award finalist Joshua Ferris (Then We Came to the End) reads from his most recent work The Unnamed, inspired by an Emily Dickinson piece. Critically-acclaimed author Victor LaValle reads from his much-praised work The Big Machine, about an ex-junkie survivor of a suicide cult who receives a mysterious note summoning him to a remote compound.

Joshua Ferris is the author of Then We Came to the End, finalist for National Book Award and winner of the 2007 PEN/Hemingway Award, and most recently The Unnamed, a novel constructed around one of Emily Dickinson’s poems. His short fiction has appeared in The New Yorker, New Stories From the South, and Best American Short Stories 2009, among other publications. Ferris and his family divide their time between Brooklyn and the Hudson River Valley.

Victor LaValle is the author of a short story collection, Slapboxing with Jesus, and two novels, The Ecstatic and Big Machine. His recent work has been published in Granta, the Nation, and The Paris Review. He is the winner of numerous awards, including most recently a Guggenheim Fellowship.