Authors Karen E. Bender & Valerie Fiorvanti, readers Kelley Ogden & Tara Henry, 2/22/19

Authors Karen E. Bender & Valerie Fioravanti, readers Kelley Ogden & Tara Henry

​We're thrilled to present Karen E Bender, author of Refund and The New Order, and Valerie Fioravanti, author of Garbage Night at the Opera, with readings by Kelley Ogden and Tara Henry.

Friday, February 22, 2019
Clara Auditorium
1425 24th Street, Sacramento
Doors open at 7PM. Readings begin at 7:30. 
A $10 donation is suggested. 

About our writers 
Karen E. Bender returns to Stories on Stage Sacramento with The New Order, her latest collection of short stories. Recently long-listed for The Story Prize, The New Order has been singled out in over a half-dozen “best of 2018” lists and won praise from The New York Times, The Boston Globe, and National Book Review, among others. Booklist,  in a starred review, praises the collection for its “…literary virtuosity, psychological authenticity, and breath-catching insight.  Bender dramatizes gripping personal dilemmas compounded by a new order of social tyranny.” Bender’s previous collection, Refund, was a finalist for the National Book Award and a Los Angeles Times bestseller. Previous titles include the novel Like Normal People, which was a Los Angeles Times bestseller, a Washington Post Best Book of the Year, and a Barnes and Noble Discover Great New Writers selection, and A Town of Empty Rooms. Her short fiction has appeared The New Yorker, Granta, Ploughshares, Zoetrope, Story, The Yale Review, Electric Literature, Narrative, The Harvard Review, Guernica, and The Iowa Review. Her stories have appeared in Best American Short Stories, Best American Mystery Stories, and New Stories from the South: The Year’s Best and have won two Pushcart prizes. Her tales “Eternal Love” and “The Fourth Prussian Dynasty” have been read in the Selected Shorts program on NPR. Karen is the Visiting Distinguished Professor of Creative Writing at Hollins University in Roanoke, VA and lives with her husband, the writer Robert Anthony Siegel, in Wilmington, North Carolina.

Valerie Fioravanti, founder of Stories on Stage Sacramento, is the author of the linked collection of Brooklyn stories Garbage Night at the Opera from BkMk Press, which won the Chandra Prize for Short Fiction. Her fiction has appeared in many literary journals, including North American Review, Cimarron Review, and Hunger Mountain. She has received eight Pushcart Prize nominations for her work and a Fulbright Fellowship to Italy.

About our readers 
Kelley Ogden is a frequent reader at Stories on Stage Sacramento.  She is an actress, writer, director and producer, who was most recently seen onstage in the Capital Stage production of Sweat. In addition to working with Sacramento Shakespeare Festival, Main Street Theatre Works and Theater Galatea, Ogden co-founded KOLT Run Creations, a local fringe theater company. She earned a BFA in performance from The Theatre School at DePaul University in Chicago. She will read “The Cell Phones” from Karen E. Bender's The New Order.

Tara Henry  has performed as Titus in Titus Andronicus (RTAA), Emma/Ensemble in The Behavior of Broadus (Capital Stage), Fanny Dashwood/Charlotte Palmer in Sense & Sensibility (Sacramento Theater Company), Cassandra in Vanya, Sonia, Masha & Spike (Main Street Theatre Works), Charlotte/Mrs.Gardner in Pride & Prejudice (Sacramento Theatre Company), Both Dromios in Comedy of Errors (Sac Shakespeare Festival), Goneril in King Lear (TAAC). Tara is appearing next in Angels in America as Angel/Nurse Emily in July at the Roseville Theatre Arts Academy. She will read “Falla’s Boys” from Valerie Fioravanti's upcoming short story collection Bridge and Tunnel.

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