March 26, 2011, Saturday - Publication Reading: Kevin Fenton and Christine Sneed at The Loft

Time: 7:00pm

Location: The Loft, 1011 Washington Avenue South

Kevin Fenton and Christine Sneed, winners of the AWP Award for the Novel and of the AWP Grace Paley Prize in Short Fiction respectively, read from their newly published works.

Kevin Fenton lives in Saint Paul and works as an advertising writer and creative director. His fiction has appeared in the Northwest Review, the Laurel Review and the Emprise Review. His writing on graphic design has been anthologized in Looking Closer 2 and Émigré No. 70: The Look Back Issue. He holds an MFA in creative writing from the University of Minnesota and a JD from the University of Minnesota Law School. About Merit Badges: Follow four friends as they move from The Brady Bunch to Seinfeld, from junior high to middle management. There is Quint, whose rebellion frays into self-destruction; Slow, who struggles to become the world’s first teenage father figure; Chimes, who fears losing his friends while picking up a 7-10 split; and Barb who escapes the conformity of Minnisapa, Minnesota, only to find herself returning by dark of night.

Christine Sneed teaches creative writing and literature courses at DePaul University. A graduate of the MFA creative writing program at Indiana University, she has published stories in Best American Short Stories 2008, New England Review, Massachusetts Review and many other journals. About Portraits of a Few of the People I’ve Made Cry: The ten stories in this striking debut collection examine the perils of love and what it means to live during an era when people will offer themselves, almost unthinkingly, to strangers. Risks and repercussions are never fully weighed. People leap and almost always land on rocky ground. May–December romances flourish in these stories, as do self-doubt and, in many cases, serious regret. Presented in cooperation with the Association of Writers & Writing Programs (AWP).