MIDDLEBURY — The NER Vermont Reading Series, which since 2011 has presented 65 writers in its quarterly series for Vermont writers and audiences, is opening its borders to writers from near and far. This first event in the newly expanded series presents Chicago-based novelist Rebecca Makkai, New Yorker Michael Coffey, and Shelburne poet Penelope Cray on Wednesday, July 22, at 7 p.m. at Carol’s Hungry Mind Café, 24 Merchants Row, Middlebury. Books will be provided by Vermont Book Shop and available for signing.
Michael Coffey is the author of three books of poems and “27 Men Out,” a book about baseball’s perfect games. He also co-edited “The Irish in America,” a book about Irish immigration to America, which was a companion volume to a PBS documentary series. His fiction and nonfiction have appeared in NER and NER Digital, and his first book of fiction, “The Business of Naming Things,” is just out from Bellevue Literary Press.
Penelope Cray’s poems and short shorts have appeared in such literary magazines as Harvard Review, Pleiades, Bartleby Snopes, elimae, and American Letters & Commentary and in the anthology “Please Do Not Remove” (2014). She holds an MFA from the New School and lives with her family in Shelburne, where she operates an editorial business.
Rebecca Makkai is the author of the new story collection, “Music for Wartime,” as well as the novels “The Hundred-Year House” and “The Borrower” (which has been published in nine translations and was chosen as a Booklist Top Ten Debut). Her short fiction, which has appeared in NER, was featured in the “Best American Short Stories” anthologies in 2008, 2009, 2010 and 2011. The recipient of a 2014 NEA Fellowship, she teaches at Lake Forest College, Northwestern University, and StoryStudio Chicago.