Name: Teagan K. Gray: Seven Minutes
Start: 2026-06-07T12:00:00-06:00
End: 2026-06-07T14:00:00-06:00
Location: Under the Umbrella Bookstore and Cafe

Join us for a special pre-release event for this local author's debut novel!
About this Event

Local author Teagan K. Gray will be doing a reading and audience Q&A. Pick up a copy of the book and get it signed!

This venue is wheelchair accessible, and masks are required and provided. ASL interpretation can be provided with 2 weeks advance notice. Please reach out with any accessibility needs.

About Seven Minutes:

[SYSTEM BOOT: SEVEN_MINUTES.EXE]
[TIMESTAMP: 11:45 AM — 09/25]

Time stops. The system fractures. And two boys get seven minutes — just long enough for one question to remain unresolved:

love() → return pending

Eli Navarro is the human embodiment of code. Time is linear, emotions are bugs, and love is an inefficient algorithm he refuses to run — until an artist crashes into his life like an exception he can't handle.

Rowan Lake has been running for as long as he can remember — away from family, from obligations, from himself. He has to trap time in his art, just to get it to stay a little bit longer. It isn't until he runs into a robot of a human that he has to figure out how to stay.

Then everything stops.

In the space between, the world doesn't make sense. Not the looping, not the glitches… not even each other. But Seven Minutes is all they have. All they had.

Somehow, it's enough.

Mara Navarro has always been the perfect Mormon girl. She is who everyone wants her to be, except when it comes to being herself. She splits herself into unlimited versions of "Mara," until she's forced to choose who she is without permission.

Cal Long is an EMT who has had to fight against death his whole life. September 25th was supposed to be just another Thursday — until a boy with glasses — one who looks like the brother he lost — crashes into his life.

Four voices. A dying system. And time that refuses to stay still.

Seven Minutes explores the space between heartbeats: what remains after the body is gone, what allows the mind to stay, and whether love can return true when life is returning false.

The answer might take eternity to find. But they only have seven minutes.

[SYSTEM STATUS: love() still waiting for async return value]
[QUERY: Was seven minutes enough?]
[RESPONSE: It's all they ever had.]
[END TRANSMISSION]

About Teagan K. Gray:

Teagan K. Gray is a debut author whose work explores the intersections of time, meaning, and the human condition. With a degree in Computer Science from the University of Utah, Teagan brings a unique perspective to literary fiction, weaving code and understanding into stories that bring into question what it means to be. Their debut novel, Seven Minutes (June 8, 2026), follows two boys who discover love in the liminal space between life and death. Teagan currently lives in Salt Lake City, Utah, where they are for sure not stuck in a temporal loop.