MELROSE — Follow Your Art Community Studios (FYACS) on Main Street will host an author talk and book launch event for Melrose resident Sara Reish Desmond on Tuesday, October 15 at 7:30 p.m. in celebration of her debut short story collection, “What We Might Become” (Cornerstone Press).
Desmond will appear in conversation with Robin MacArthur, author of “Half Wild and Heart Spring Mountain.” The evening will include a brief reading, a moderated conversation, and audience Q&A, followed by light refreshments. Books will be available for purchase and signing, courtesy of Molly’s Bookstore of Melrose. The event is free, but please register in advance at www.FYAmelrose.org.
A vivid debut collection, Sara Reish Desmond’s “What We Might Become” captures pivotal moments between self-discovery and becoming. Against familiar American backdrops—girl scout cookie sales, supermarket parking lots, backyard barbecues, dance recitals, illicit barn parties—Desmond’s characters surprise themselves and each other as they move more decisively toward their own desires.
“The cadence of these sentences, the probing, unsettling voice of her narrators, and the dark conclusions she reaches about the underside of contemporary American life . . . Desmond writes with a quiet fury,” writes acclaimed writer Jess Row of Desmond’s collection.
Sara Reish Desmond grew up in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania, a small community nested among the Appalachian mountains and surrounded by Amish communities. She earned a BA in English from Kenyon College and her MFA in Fiction from Vermont College of Fine Arts. Her work has appeared in The Los Angeles Review, The Kenyon Review and Water~Stone Review, among others. Her short stories have been finalists for the Rick DeMarinis Short Story Prize and The Copper Nickel Award. She recently completed a novel about grief and redemption set in the rural Pennsylvania of her upbringing. She teaches at FYACS and lives in Melrose with her husband and two daughters. Learn more at sarareishdesmond.com.
Follow Your Art Community Studios (“The Big Yellow House”) is located at 647 Main St., Melrose. To learn more and register for the event, visit www.FYAmelrose.org. Donations to support FYACS are always appreciated. For more information, email writers@fyamelrose.org.
