Name: Ron Tanner and Ben Warner present: SPECULATIVE FICTION
Start: 2026-06-10T18:00:00-04:00
End: 2026-06-10T19:30:00-04:00
Location: The Ivy Bookshop - Back Patio

Ron Tanner and Ben Warner present: SPECULATIVE FICTION

Join us for an evening with Ron Tanner and Ben Warner as they introduce their new book, Speculative Fiction: A Writer's Guide and Anthology.
About this Event

This is a book designed to help writers and teachers of writing explore and develop their understanding of this broad and increasingly popular genre.

Whether you're interested in horror, science fiction, fantasy, time travel, lost worlds and so much more under the speculative fiction umbrella, you will find this book valuable.

Speculative Fiction: A Writer's Guide and Anthology contains not only exercises, student examples of writing, and historical/cultural backgrounds of key developments in the genre but also an impressive anthology of stories from such writers as Joyce Carol Oates, George Saunders, and Rebecca Roanhorse.

For tonight's presentation, Ron will explain why the discovery of dinosaur fossils might be the most important development in the rise of speculative fiction. Ben will then read a hilarious, and now iconic, story from the anthology. Their brief presentation will be followed by Q&A about this monstrous genre we call speculative fiction.

Looking forward to seeing you there!

here!

Benjamin Warner is a graduate of the University of Wisconsin and Cornell University’s MFA program. A lecturer at Towson University, he teaches courses in composition, environmental writing, and fiction writing. Ben is the adviser to the Towson University Urban Farm and Veg Club. His fiction and nonfiction have appeared in Salon.com, The Washington Post Magazine, and Punchnel’s, among others.

Ron Tanner’s writing has been named “notable” in both Best American Essays and Best American Short Stories. His awards for fiction include the Faulkner Society gold medal, Pushcart Prize, New Letters Award, and many others, as well as fellowships from the Michener/Copernicus Society, Sewanee Writers Conference, and the National Park Service, to name a few. His novel Missile Paradise was named a “notable book of 2017” by the American Library Association. His most recent book, Far West, a story collection, won the Elixir Press book prize in 2020. He lives on an historic farm in Maryland and directs the Good Contrivance Farm Writer’s Retreat, an educational nonprofit.