The MPC Guest Authors Series welcomes novelist Micah Perks at MPC for this public reading, followed by a question & answer period and book signing. 

Micah Perks grew up in a log cabin on a commune in the Adirondack wilderness. She is the author of a novel, We Are Gathered Here, a memoir, Pagan Time, a long personal essay, Alone in the Woods: Cheryl Strayed, My Daughter and Me and her new novel, What Becomes Us. Her short stories and essays have won five Pushcart Prize nominations, and three of them are available separately on audible. Excerpts of her new novel, What Becomes Us, won an NEA and The New Guard Machigonne 2014 Fiction Prize. She received her BA and MFA from Cornell University. She lives in Santa Cruz with her family where she co-directs the creative writing program at University of California, Santa Cruz. More info and work can be found on micahperks.com

In What Becomes Us, twin fetuses tell the story of their mild-mannered mother who abandons her controlling husband to start fresh in a small town in upstate New York. But her seemingly ideal neighbors are violently divided by the history Evie is teaching at the high school—the captivity and restoration of colonist Mary Rowlandson, a watershed conflict that leads our little narrators to ask big questions about love, survival, coveting the man next door and what exactly is a healthy appetite. 

“Micah Perks’ wonderful and surprising new novel proves that the life of a small-town schoolteacher can be by turns comic, dramatic, joyful, and violent. For one thing, its wise and observant narrators are unborn twins”

— Alison Lurie, Pulitzer Prize winning author 

When:

November 17, 2016. The event will begin at 7 o'clock.

Where:

Monterey Peninsula College LTC (Library and Technology Center) - Sam Karas Room

Ticket Information:

• Tickets are just $10 each and can be purchased at the event or in advance in the Humanities Division Office after September 20th.)
• Ticket sales are by cash or check only.

Questions about this event should be directed to Henry Marchand at hmarchand@mpc.edu

Information about the Guest Authors Series, and video of past Series events, may be found on the Guest Authors page on the Creative Writing website.

About the Series

As participants in The MPC Guest Authors Series, accomplished writers of poetry and prose come to our main campus in Monterey for public readings and discussions of writing and literature with MPC students.

Supported by The MPC Creative Writing Program, English Department, and Humanities Division, as well as The MPC Foundation and The Arts Council for Monterey County, the Series typically presents two Guest Authors each academic year, one in the Fall and one in the Spring semester.

Further enhancing the vibrant and inspiring Creative Writing environment at MPC, the Series offers extraordinary opportunity for those who pursue their own writing interest by way of our multi-genre Creative Writing curriculum to meet with and learn from diverse literary artists of consummate skill.