About this Event
Join us IN PERSON Tuesday, September 13th at 7:00pm central to help celebrate Ling Ma's new short story collection, Bliss Montage. Ling will be in conversation with Exile MVP Lindsay Hunter!
About Bliss Montage: Stories:
A new creation by the author of Severance, the stories in Bliss Montage crash through our carefully built mirages. What happens when fantasy tears through the screen of the everyday to wake us up? Could that waking be our end?
In Bliss Montage, Ling Ma brings us eight wildly different tales of people making their way through the madness and reality of our collective delusions: love and loneliness, connection and possession, friendship, motherhood, the idea of home. From a woman who lives in a house with all of her ex-boyfriends, to a toxic friendship built around a drug that makes you invisible, to an ancient ritual that might heal you of anything if you bury yourself alive, these and other scenarios reveal that the outlandish and the everyday are shockingly, deceptively, heartbreakingly similar.
About the authors:
Ling Ma is a writer hailing from Fujian, Utah, and Kansas. She is the author of the novel Severance, which received the Kirkus Prize, a Whiting Award, the VCU Cabell First Novelist Award, and the New York Public Library Young Lions Fiction Award. She lives in Chicago with her family.
Lindsay Hunter received her MFA in Writing from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She co-founded and co-hosted the groundbreaking Quickies! reading series, an event that focused on flash fiction. Her first book, Daddy’s, a collection of flash fiction, was published in 2010 by featherproof books, a boutique press in Chicago. Her second collection, DON’T KISS ME, was published by FSG Originals in 2013 and was named one of Amazon’s 10 Best Books of the Year: Short Stories. Her first novel, Ugly Girls, was published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux in November 2014. The Huffington Post called it “a story that hits a note that’s been missing from the chorus of existing feminist literature.” Her latest novel, Eat Only When You’re Hungry, was a Book of the Month Club selection, a finalist for the 2017 Chicago Review of Books Fiction Award, and a 2017 NPR Great Read. Along with the writer Alex Higley, she runs the podcast I’m a Writer But, a series about writers with kids, jobs, and/or lives, and how they make it all work (or don’t). Lindsay’s fifth book, a novel titled Hot Springs Drive, is forthcoming on Roxane Gay Books in November 2023. She lives in Chicago with her family.
About this event:
This is a ticketed event. Registration for this event includes a signed/personalized copy of Ling's book Bliss Montage: Stories, sales tax, and the eventbrite processing fee.
You can purchase additional copies of their books through the respective links on our website. Also, Ling and Lindsay will be more than happy to sign or personalize those copies! If you can't make it to the event, signed copies will be available and we ship nationally!
Please note the following COVID protocols for those attending IN PERSON:
Attendees must present a physical copy or a photo of their COVID-19 vaccine card along with a valid photo ID (state, government, or school ID); or
Provide a time-stamped printout, photo, or email of a negative PCR test taken within 48 hours of the event or a negative Rapid Antigen Test taken within 36 hours of the event, along with a valid photo ID (state, government, or school ID).
All persons must wear a mask for the duration of their time in the Fine Arts Building, regardless of vaccination status in accordance with our current COVID policies
This amazing event will be hosted on the fourth floor (suite 410) in our building! Seating is limited. Advanced registration is strongly encouraged!
Please email us at [email protected] or phone us at (312)-753-3154 if you have any questions or concerns.
Event Venue & Nearby Stays
Exile in Bookville, 410 South Michigan Avenue, Chicago, United States
USD 33.67