Jesse Sawyer reads from "Sunset Riders," and Tracy Mumford reads from "Exceptionally Bad"

Join us for an evening with two creative new authors.

Sunset Riders, a debut novel by Jesse Sawyer, is a violent, hilarious, mind trip of a thing. You could describe it as "Cormac McCarthy meets Sega Genesis." Illustrated by Ryan Simonson, the book follows Steve, a nihilist video game avatar, as he blasts his way through a nightmare desert where all the towns run sideways, the sun blares down from high noon, and a system tries to erase him. Under its effortless prose is a sense of urgency that faces us all: Steve must find a way to be human while the world demands of him the opposite.

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Exceptionally Bad is a collection of connected short pieces by Tracy Mumford, illustrated by Anne Lane. The first line of every story is a fragment of the real life of an historical figure--a series of wild, undercover exploits. Then the truth stops, and the universes spin. Editor Ross Nervig crafted and dispensed these first line prompts to the author and illustrator without revealing the figure’s true identity until the end of the project. What emerges from the madness are firecrackers of delight: wayward quintuplets, love potions, robots facing down firing squads, futuristic nuns, Solar Cats™, a man marrying a statute and more stories of bad people, bad behavior, and above all, exceptional feats of imagination.