William Auten – författare

Faced with increasing loneliness and mortality, Patty Pemberton is torn between a past she honors, a present she assumes is stable, and a future she doesn''t know how to plan for. After a new friend disappears from her life, and as autumn deepens and the year''s end closes in, she journeys into her community and the places and histories binding them all-and haunting her-until she arrives at what is most important while hoping her friend returns. Rich with characters and locations, as well as personal and public chronicles, October is a moving and compassionate meditation on life, love, memory, and death.

Every day, I move between Saul and Ray. And although Ray has been gone for a while and I live alone, I am never alone because he and our images when we were together and Saul and his image have me. One photo greets me, like a face in a crowd, and the other image, more familiar over time, also comes and goes. Both photos have been with me at peaks, in valleys, and on the plains in between. I pass by them daily and nightly, month to month, but I should only have one.

William Auten is the author of the novels In Another Sun and Pepper''s Ghost and the short-story collection A Fine Day Will Burn Through. His work has appeared widely online and in print. williamauten.com

Hollywood and Japan. The South and Midwest. Outer space and back home. Past and present. Myths and truths. Expectations and desires. Animals and humans. A storage locker and a softball game. A school play and an art installation. A bar mitzvah and an old tattoo. William Auten''s new fifteen-story collection A Fine Day Will Burn Through bridges cultures and explores how people of all ages try to reach for-and sometimes miss-each other. In circumstances both mundane and surprising, these characters wend their way through a contemporary world of excess and restraint, noise and silence, urgency and patience, regret and grace.

Extraordinary stories about ordinary Americans. A stock-car driver gets money any way he can for his son''s birthday present. A girl meets a horse for the first time. Two firefighters help each other while a storm delays their camping trip. A museum employee is asked to monitor her colleague. A boy wavers saying goodbye to his friend. A super receives an evening call from an elderly resident. A brother decides between the family business or his estranged wife. A daughter delivers a memento to her mother. After losing his main income, a craftsman continues supporting his grandsons...and more.

BEHOLD THE GORILLA-GIRL! Charlotte Alexandra Long is determined to leave all she knows: her ill-fitting office job, her unreliable boyfriend, and the city she has lived in since adolescence. But leaving that life requires leaving her haunted father who wants nothing but the best for her yet reminds her of a past he''s not ready to let go. After joining a traveling amusement company as a sideshow performer, where an old theater trick blurs illusion and reality, Charlotte transforms into Alex who ascends into a star. While wrestling with a spectrum of coworkers, her evolving identity, her troubled father, and her concerned mother, Alex faces an uncertain future that threatens everything she has established. As Pepper''s Ghost weaves in and out of the South and Midwest, Alex must reevaluate who she is and navigate the crossroads of family, memories, and places that challenge her in times of ambiguity and tragedy.