BINDERY: C. Dale Young / The Affliction

Thursday, March 29, 2018 - 7:30pm
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The Bindery is thrilled to host acclaimed poet C. Dale Young reading from his debut novel in stories, The Affliction. Reading with him will be poet Javier Zamora—don't miss it!


“...It is never easy to know a story well. Sometimes, all one can gather is an impression. Sometimes, Time itself muddies
the details to the point little if any fact remains....”
from “Inside the Great House”

Javier Castillo was born with the strange ability to disappear; it takes up to three minutes. Rosa Blanco sits in her small kitchen, replaying a moment from the past over and over again. Leenck is aware of his impending death, but no one is aware of him. C. Dale Young’s fiction debut The Affliction: A Novel in Stories weaves together the lives of these characters, lives lived in the cracks and seams of cities like Los Angeles and Santa Monica. Reminiscent of Julia Alvarez and Manuel Muñoz, The Affliction makes audible the voices we have heard “whispering in the air as the sun left the sky.”

Young, the prize-winning author of four collections of poetry, deftly explores the inexplicable as it haunts the everyday: “What I know clearly is that the rain pelted everything, and the deck, the dock, the very earth between the boat and my father’s small house, suddenly took on the dark stain of rainwater, a stain not quite as dark as the heart, a stain not quite as dark as blood.” Young writes of people who know what it is to be disappeared—desaparecidos— and of those who know what it is to have to hide. He renders the grueling, distorting effect of such disappearances on individuals and on those who know them in love or fear or wonder. The Affliction provides powerful testament to the notion of stories as resistance to loss. This is a book of necessary, clear-hearted affirmation in troubled times.

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C. Dale Young practices medicine full-time and teaches in the Warren Wilson College MFA Program for Writers. He is the author of four poetry collections, most recently The Halo (Four Way Books, 2016); this is his first fiction collection. He has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, and the Rockefeller Foundation. His fiction and poetry have appeared in many publications, including The Atlantic Monthly, Guernica, The Hopkins Review, Normal School, The Paris Review, and Ploughshares, as well as anthologies, including several editions of The Best American Poetry.

Javier Zamora was born in El Salvador and migrated to the US when he was nine. He is a 2016-2018 Wallace Stegner Fellow and holds fellowships from CantoMundo, Colgate University, MacDowell, the National Endowment for the Arts, Poetry Foundation, and Yaddo. The recipient of a 2017 Lannan Literary Fellowship, the 2017 Narrative Prize, and the 2016 Barnes and Noble Writer for Writers Award; Zamora’s poems appear in Granta, Poetry, The Kenyon Review, The New York Times, and elsewhere. Unaccompanied (Copper Canyon Press, Sept. 2017) is his first collection.

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Please note: this event will be at The Bindery, 1727 Haight. RSVP appreciated but not required.

 

Bar opens at 7, event begins at 7:30pm.

 

If you cannot attend the event but would like to request a signed copy of any books by the authorsorder below and put your request in the comments field. 

 

Books: 
The Affliction: A Novel in Stories By C. Dale Young Cover Image
$17.95
ISBN: 9781945588068
Availability: Special Order - Subject to Availability
Published: Four Way Books - March 6th, 2018

The Halo By C. Dale Young Cover Image
$15.95
ISBN: 9781935536680
Availability: Special Order - Subject to Availability
Published: Four Way Books - March 1st, 2016

Torn By C. Dale Young Cover Image
$15.95
ISBN: 9781935536062
Availability: Special Order - Subject to Availability
Published: Four Way Books - March 8th, 2011

Unaccompanied By Javier Zamora Cover Image
$16.00
ISBN: 9781556595110
Availability: On Our Shelves Now
Published: Copper Canyon Press - September 5th, 2017