Join us in welcoming poet Lynn Levin as she discusses her newest collection, HOUSE PARTIES, with author Cynthia Branigan, on Thursday, May 11th, 2023, at 6:00 PM.
About the Book:
With a deft command of comic distance and abiding compassion for her characters, Lynn Levin in House Parties, her debut collection of short fiction, presents us with a broad range of characters who ardently, foolishly, and often with weird invention, relentlessly spar with their fates.
Three friends hike through Yosemite in search of an awe-inspiring waterfall that may or may not exist...a girl on a high-school science trip finds herself abandoned on an island inhabited by aggressive monkeys...a lonely young rabbinical student creates and animates a female form only to see her beloved creature acquire free will...overwhelmed by surveys, an office worker rebels la Bartleby...a couple believes that a move to a friendly and sophisticated exurban neighborhood will set the stage for happy marriage.
Many of the characters in House Parties see themselves with a certain bemused humor and strive to stay self-possessed even as they struggle against the strange and undeserved things that happen to them. At other times, the characters-sometimes successfully, sometimes not-keep trying to escape the gravity of a plight they created or a problem they refuse to resolve. In observant and generous prose, Levin writes in tones that range from the wry, witty, and hilarious to the lyrical and deeply serious.
About the Authors:
Lynn Levin is a poet, writer, translator, and teacher. She is the author of eight books, most recently, the poetry collection The Minor Virtues (2020). Previous volumes include Poems for the Writing: Prompts for Poets, Second Edition, with co-author Valerie Fox (2019); Birds on the Kiswar Tree (2014), a translation from the Spanish of a collection of poems by the Peruvian Andean poet Odi Gonzales; and the poetry collections Miss Plastique (2013), a Next Generation Indie Book Awards finalist in poetry; Fair Creatures of an Hour (2009), a Next Generation Indie Book Awards finalist in poetry; Imaginarium (2005), a finalist for ForeWord Magazine’s Book of the Year Award; and A Few Questions about Paradise (2000). Levin is the producer/director of the 2017 video documentary Life on the Napo River: A Glimpse of the Ecuadoran Amazon, Its People, and Their Traditions.
Lynn Levin’s poems, essays, short fiction, and translations have appeared in Ploughshares, Boulevard, The Hopkins Review, Artful Dodge, Rattle, Michigan Quarterly Review, Southwest Review, Cleaver, JewishFiction.net, Verse Daily, and other places. A fifteen-time Pushcart Prize nominee, Levin has received two grants from the Leeway Foundation and is a poet laureate of Bucks County, Pennsylvania. Garrison Keillor has read her poems on The Writer’s Almanac, and she has been a guest on NPR’s Radio Times with Marty Moss-Coane.
Born in St. Louis, Missouri, Lynn Levin holds a BA in comparative literature from Northwestern University and an MFA in writing from Vermont College of Fine Arts. A former producer of the TV talk-show The Drexel InterView, Lynn Levin has also had careers in publishing and advertising. She lives in Bucks County, Pennsylvania and teaches English and creative writing at Drexel University, where she has received the Adjunct Award for Teaching Excellence. From 2005-2017, she taught creative writing at the University of Pennsylvania.
CYNTHIA A. BRANIGAN grew up in New Jersey and was educated at Franconia College and the University of Pennsylvania. She is the founder of Make Peace with Animals, Inc., and pioneered the adoption of retired racing greyhounds worldwide. She lives in New Hope, Pennsylvania.
