Bill Gaythwaite - A Place in the World: StoriesRamona Reeves - It Falls Gently All Around and Other Stories
Presented by Left Bank Books & the Left Bank Books Foundation
Join us to celebrate Bill Gaythwaite and Ramona Reeves. Each honored with the prestigious Drue Heinz Literature Prize, Gaythwaite and Reeves will read from their award-winning collections and discuss their work.
"These are captivating stories that reveal how intertwined we really are with our past selves. A fantastic collection about facing up to the ghosts of our mistakes and our fears, and how our secrets refuse to let us forget who we were and what we've done."--Manuel Muñoz, author of What You See in the Dark and The Consequences and judge of the 2025 Drue Heinz Literature Prize, on A Place in the World: Stories
"These big-hearted stories offer a kaleidoscopic vision of Mobile, Alabama, a place marked by a tangled history and no less tangled present. With insight, humor, and tenderness, Ramona Reeves renders lives as notable for their frailties and bruises as they are for their grace and grit. Like the work of Sherwood Anderson or Elizabeth Strout, these linked stories take us deep inside a community, even as they plumb the solitary, fiercely particular depths of inner life."--Elizabeth Graver, Drue Heinz Literature Prize guest judge and author of The End of the Point, on It Falls Gently All Around and Other Stories
Gaythwaite and Reeves will personalize and sign copies after the presentation! Personalized and signed copies will be available to be mailed anywhere in the country. For personalized copies, please order before noon on October 9th.
Join us at Left Bank Books
399 N. Euclid Ave
St. Louis, MO 63108
Watch the livestream on Left Bank Books' YouTube Page
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This event is possible thanks to the support of individual donations to the Left Bank Books Foundation. Donate today!
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Your presence is a gift. When you attend our readings and purchase visiting authors' titles, you help us sustain our events calendar and continue to offer free literary programming to the community. Join us!
About the Speakers
Bill Gaythwaite is the 45th Drue Heinz Literature Prize winner. His short fiction has appeared in Subtropics, Chicago Quarterly Review, Willow Springs, South Carolina Review, Puerto del Sol, and many other publications. Gaythwaite's debut novel, Underburn, was published by Delphinium Books in 2023. Three of his stories have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize. Gaythwaite is currently assistant director for special populations at Columbia Law School. He lives in New Jersey with his partner.
Ramona Reeves grew up in Alabama. She has won the Nancy D. Hargrove Editors' Prize and been an A Room of Her Own fellow and a resident at the Kimmel Nelson Harding Center for the Arts. Her writing has appeared in the Southampton Review, New South, Bayou Magazine, Texas Highways, and others.
The Drue Heinz Literature Prize recognizes and supports writers of short fiction. The award is open to authors who have published a book-length collection of fiction or at least three short stories or novellas in commercial magazines or literary journals. Past winners include Stewart O’Nan, Elizabeth Graver, Caroline Kim, Leslie Pietrzyk, and Ramona Reeves.
Manuscripts are judged anonymously by nationally known writers. Past judges have included Robert Penn Warren, Joyce Carol Oates, Raymond Carver, Margaret Atwood, Russell Banks, Deesha Philyaw, and Joan Didion. Jane McCafferty is the managing editor for the Drue Heinz Prize.
Winners receive a cash prize of $15,000, publication by the University of Pittsburgh Press, and support in the nation-wide promotion of their book.
About A Place in the World: Stories
Winner of the 2025 Drue Heinz Literature Prize
Stories of Ordinary People Experiencing Extraordinary Circumstances
The eleven stories in A Place in the World are character-driven portrayals of various lives transformed by random events or twists of fate. A young woman living on the coast of Maine confronts her painful past when her little brother comes to visit after being released from rehab, a hopeless gay hustler, in for the long con, instead finds himself falling in love while vacationing in Denmark, a failed New York City actor afraid of commitment goes on a comic rant and embraces an epiphany while cat-sitting for a friend. In separate, first-person narratives, a struggling husband and wife take turns describing the impact of a scandalous crisis in their marriage, a settled suburban dad arrives at a beach house for the weekend, only to realize he robbed one of the other houseguests thirty-four years earlier. In this poignant, engaging collection, Gaythwaite offers compassion and surprising optimism while celebrating astonishing resilience in the face of life's persistent challenges.
About It Falls Gently All Around and Other Stories
Winner of the 2022 Drue Heinz Literature Prize
Winner of the 2023 Sergio Troncoso Award for Best First Book of Fiction, Texas Institute of Letters
Happiness and connection prove fickle in this debut collection of eleven linked stories introducing Babbie and Donnie. She is a thrice-divorced former call girl, and he is a sobriety-challenged trucker turned yogi. Along with their community of exes, in-laws, and coworkers, Babbie and Donnie share a longing to reforge their lives, a task easier said than done in Mobile, Alabama, which bears its own share of tainted history. Despite overwhelming challenges and the ever-looming specters of status, race, and class, the characters in It Falls Gently All Around and Other Stories strive for versions of the American dream through modern and often unconventional means. Told with humor and honesty, these stories remind us not only about the fallibility of being human and the resistance of some to change but also about finding redemption in unlikely places.
Event Venue
399 N Euclid Ave, St. Louis, MO, United States, Missouri 63108, 391 N Euclid Ave, St Louis, MO 63108-1245, United States, Clayton
