BUY BOOK

September 14th | 7pm CST

Strange Attractors | Janice Deal

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ABOUT THE BOOK

In Janice Deal’s linked story collection STRANGE ATTRACTORS, everyday people navigate the uncertainties of life in the American heartland, seeking order in chaos with a very human mix of resilience and folly. At first glance, the fictional Ephrem, Illinois, seems a friendly, familiar town: it draws you right in, even if you don’t need supplies at the mall or a snack at Brat Station. But as you come closer, you discover people who are complex and unpredictable. Life itself is capricious, and loneliness can turn a person strange. Past traumas linger. Illness sometimes falls like a hammer. Yet there’s much affection here, small and large examples of human kindness. For years, Janice Deal has been publishing these award-winning stories about Ephrem. Now assembled for the first time, these extraordinary tales offer a masterful snapshot of life in today’s small-town America.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

JANICE DEAL is the author of a novel, The Sound of Rabbits (Regal House, 2023), and the story collection The Decline of Pigeons (Queen’s Ferry, 2013), which was a Flannery O’Connor Award finalist. The Sound of Rabbits was a finalist for both the Many Voices Project annual competition and the Black Lawrence Press Big Moose Prize. Stories from her new collection, Strange Attractors, won The Moth Short Story Prize and the Cagibi Macaron Prize. Janice has also received an Illinois Arts Council Artists Fellowship Award for prose. She lives with her husband in the Chicago area. Visit www.janicedeal.com.

ABOUT KATHY BERGEN

KATHY BERGEN is a journalist and fiction writer based in Chicago. As an editor and award-winning reporter for the Chicago Tribune for 25 years, she covered urban affairs and economic issues facing the region. As one of the lead reporters covering Chicago’s 2016 Olympic bid, she followed the Mayor Richard M. Daley’s bid team to the Beijing Olympics in 2008 and to Copenhagen in 2009 for the final vote. She’s now working on a set of linked short stories set in post-WWII Europe. Most recently, she’s had short fiction published in The McNeese Review and The Briar Cliff Review. A graduate of the University of Illinois in Champaign-Urbana, she also was a fellow in the National Press Foundation’s program on China’s emergence as an economic power, held at Fudan University in Shanghai in 2014.