Four master storytellers examine life’s many twists and turns, from the mundane to absurd. Ron Carlson’s The Blue Box, a collection of flash fiction, uses small space to tell big stories whose themes run the gamut from finding love to finding lake monsters. In Kids in the Wind, Brad Wethern tells delightful tales of childhood in a small seaside town, of the magic and madness found in the minds of the young. Ellen Meeropol’s On Hurricane Island confronts the hot-button issue of personal freedom in her wild tale of a math professor kidnapped by federal agents. In How to Carry Bigfoot Home, Chris Tarry tells thrilling tales to lay bare what makes us truly human.

Author Bios

Ron Carlson is the author of five story collections and six novels, including Return to Oakpine and The Signal, as well as a book of poems, Room Service: Poems, Meditations, Outcries, & Remarks (Red Hen Press, 2012). His most recent book is Sex World, a Fall 2014 flash-fiction collection from Red Hen Press. His fiction has appeared in Harper’s, The New Yorker, Playboy, GQ, Best American Short Stories, and The O. Henry Prize Stories, and his book on writing, Ron Carlson Writes a Story, is taught widely. He is the director of the writing program at the University of California at Irvine and lives in Huntington Beach, California.

A Southern California native, businessman, writer and humorist, Brad Wethern spent several years of his boyhood life in Corvallis, Oregon, and on the coast of Northern California. It is from these times and locales that his debut collection of short stories, Kids in the Wind (Red Hen Press, May 2015), is derived. A Cal Berkeley graduate in Dramatic Arts, he was an actor for several years in San Francisco, New York, and Chicago—as well as a standup comedian. He returned to his favorite clime—Southern California—to go into business as a real estate agent several years ago. He is known in that area from his many videos and his Facebook presence as “Brad the Dad, Realtor.” He has recently appeared as a regular on local PBS television and local radio shows. Additionally, he performs as a humorous motivational speaker on a regular basis at the Claremont Center for Spiritual Living and other venues in California. He has two grown children and makes his home in Ontario, California. You can read more about him at KidsintheWind.com.

Ellen Meeropol is the author of two novels, House Arrest (2011) and On Hurricane Island (March 2015), both from Red Hen Press. A former nurse practitioner, a part-time bookseller, and a literary late bloomer, she holds an MFA from the Stonecoast Program at the University of Southern Maine. Her short stories and essays have been published in Bridges, Pedestal, Rumpus, Portland Magazine, Shaking Magazine, Women’s Times, Off Our Backs, and others. Her dramatic script, “Carry it Forward,” tells the story of the Rosenberg Fund for Children; it was produced most recently June 2013 in Manhattan, starring Eve Ensler, Angela Davis, and Cotter Smith. Ellen lives with her husband in Western Massachusetts. Visit her online at www.ellenmeeropol.com.

Chris Tarry holds an MFA from the University of British Columbia, and is the author of the short story collection How To Carry Bigfoot Home, which was recently released in March 2015 by Red Hen Press. His fiction has appeared in publications such as The Literary Review, On Spec, The GW Review, PANK, BULL, and Monkeybicycle; his non-fiction has appeared in the anthology How to Expect What You’re Not Expecting, and Outside In Literary & Travel Magazine. In 2012, his story “Here Be Dragons” was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. He is also a four-time Juno Award winner, and one of New York’s most sought-after musicians.

Moderator bio:

Kate Gale is Managing Editor of Red Hen Press, Editor of The Los Angeles Review and President of the American Composers Forum, LA. She teaches in the Low Residency MFA program at the University of Nebraska in Poetry, Fiction and Creative Non-Fiction. She serves on the boards of the A Room of Her Own Foundation and the Poetry Society of America. Kate is the author of seven books of poetry including Echo Light (Red Mountain Press) and The Goldilocks Zone (University of New Mexico Press, 2014) and six librettos including Rio de Sangre, a libretto for an opera with composer Don Davis—which had its world premiere October 2010 at the Florentine Opera in Milwaukee.