Three debut novelists will read from their recently published works, all of which focus on the turbulence and transformation endemic to growing up and coming of age. In Cottonmouths, Kelly J. Ford’s protagonist has a bit rockier journey than most, contending with meth labs, intolerance, and unrequited love following a return to Arkansas after dropping out of college. The title character in Gabe Habash’s novel Stephen Florida is, if anything, too driven by his desire to become an NCAA wrestling champion during his senior year of college. Habash’s novel, according to the Atlantic, “captures how competitiveness and masculinity can unravel those who blindly follow its codes.” And Simeon Marsalis’s As Lie Is to Grin, which was recently shortlisted for the Center for Fiction’s First Novel Prize, also uses college as the backdrop for his protagonist’s self-discovery, as he attempts to find his place at the largely white University of Vermont while immersing himself in black literary history. Our host for this session of fiction readings is Whitney Scharer, one of the curators of the Arlington Author Salon.
