Scott Wrobel reads from "Cul-de-Sac," and Paula Bomer reads from "Nine Months"

An evening of literature about the dark side of American parenting

“Scott Wrobel is an amazingly sharp and gifted writer, and his debut, Cul De Sac,
set in a twenty-first century American suburbia of lost dreams and
troubled families, is not only one of the truest and saddest collections
of stories I’ve ever read, but also one of the funniest.”--Donald Ray
Pollock, author of Knockemstiff and The Devil All the Time

We know the men who populate Cul De Sac from
our own neighborhoods and our own familiar fantasies of the American
good life, yet in Scott Wrobel’s hands their faults and strange inner
minds frighten and delight us. Here are middle-aged men who deal with
parenting, marriage, and grief by untangling extension cords, organizing
garages, stalking seasonal Eastern European service workers at family
resorts, violating jars of mayonnaise, and sabotaging houses-for-sale to
keep their neighborhood Caucasian. Cul De Sac is
an honest and empathetic look behind the tailored lawns and powerwashed
decks of a suburban community to its awkwardly humorous and sad
reality. Cul De Sac provokes, challenges, and invites nervous laughter.

Scott Wrobel has published work in The Rake, Identity Theory, Night Train, Pindeldyboz, Word Riot, Great River Review, and Minnesota Monthly,
among other places. He is a winner of the Loft Mentor Series Fiction
Award and won the Third Coast 2008 Nonfiction Award. He has also been
nominated for the Best New American Writers of 2009. Learn more at
www.scottwrobel.com.

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"Nine Months is
the best book I have read about the secret fears and sinister
underbelly of becoming a parent, a satire which should be viewed not
only as a stellar novel, but as a challenge to a literary scene mired in
laziness, backslapping and lousy cliches."--Tony O’Neill, author of Sick City



Sonia,
a young Brooklyn mother shaken by her unexpected (third) pregnancy,
abandons her husband and kids and takes off on a cross-country odyssey
in search of an identity separate from her family. She does everything a
pregnant woman shouldn't do--engaging in casual sex and smoking weed—as
she retraces her past and attempts to reclaim her sidelined career as
an artist. Nine Months
is a fierce, daring page-turner of a novel--a lacerating response to
the culture of mommy blogs, helicopter parents and "parental
correctness" as well as an unflinching look at the choices women face
when trying to balance art and family.



Paula Bomer is publisher of Sententia Books and the editor of Sententia: A Literary Journal as well as a contributor to the literary blog, Big Other. Her writing has appeared in The Mississippi Review, Open City, Fiction, Nerve, and Best American Erotica. Her collection, Baby & Other Stories, is published by Word Riot Press. She lives in Brooklyn with her husband and two children.