Michael Parker Book Launch

When:
June 22, 2019 @ 7:00 pm – 8:00 pm
2019-06-22T19:00:00-05:00
2019-06-22T20:00:00-05:00
Cost:
Free

Join us in celebrating the release of Michael Parker’s highly acclaimed new novel, Prairie Fever, a moving, funny, and often surprising story about the unique connection between sisters. Michael will be in conversation with Laura Furman.

In Prairie Fever, Parker takes his readers to the prairie of Oklahoma in the early 1900s and introduces two sisters, opposites in every way, as they grow up amongst the rugged landscape. 

“In the tradition of Katherine Ann Porter, Parker’s exceptional tale explores the power and strength of kinship on the harsh American frontier.” —Publishers Weekly

“A frontier tale of sibling rivalry. . . Parker’s novel isn’t as much about sisterhood as love, as the two struggle to reckon with their estrangement head-on; some of the novel’s most powerful sections are Elise’s letters to Lorena, addressed not directly to sis but to the horse she rode during the blizzard. . .the easygoing, sometimes-smirking nature of the prose (True Grit comes to mind) makes the novel a pleasant ride overall.” —Kirkus Reviews

Michael Parker’s work has appeared in the Washington Post, the New York Times Magazine, the Oxford AmericanRunner’s WorldMen’s Journal, and elsewhere. His work has been anthologized in The O. Henry Prize Stories and The Pushcart Prize. He is the Nicholas and Nancy Vacc Distinguished Professor in the MFA Writing Program at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, and divides his time between Saxapahaw, North Carolina, and Austin, Texas.

Laura Furman was born in Brooklyn, New York, and graduated from Bennington College. After college she worked at Grove Press and then as a freelance copy editor for various New York publishing houses and the Menil Foundation. Her first story appeared in The New Yorker in 1976, and since then work has appeared in Yale Review, Epoch, Southwest Review, Ploughshares, American Scholar, and other magazines. Her books include three collections of short stories, two novels, and a memoir. Her most recent collection is The Mother Who Stayed. She has received fellowships from the New York State Council on the Arts, Dobie Paisano Project, the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Arts. Since 2002, she’s been Series Editor of The O. Henry Prize Stories. For many years, she taught at the University of Texas at Austin, where she is now professor emerita. Laura Furman lives in Austin with her husband Joel Warren Barna and their son.

2 thoughts on “Michael Parker Book Launch

Leave a Reply