Angela Woodward will be reading from her new novel, Ink. Ink tells the story of two women who transcribe harrowing accounts of torture as suffered by detainees at Abu Ghraib. Their worlds eventually collide. Told in short chapters, the novel also includes a lyrical history of ink, a view of French poet Francis Ponge at work writing, and diary-like notations about a daily commute and a frozen lake.
Angela Woodward is the author of the novels Ink, End of the Fire Cult, and Natural Wonders, and two collections of short fiction, The Human Mind and Origins and Other Stories. Natural Wonders won the FC2 Doctorow Innovative Fiction prize in 2015 and was reviewed in Publishers Weekly, American Book Review, Electric Literature, and elsewhere. Woodward won a Pushcart Prize and published stories and essays in many journals, including the Kenyon Review, Ninth Letter, the Los Angeles Review of Books, and American Chordata.
Mickle Maher will be reading from his recently published collection, Six Plays. Maher’s plays engage classic literature as a jumping off point for seriously unusual comedic dramas, often dealing with the absurdity, difficulties, and rewards of artistic endeavor. His work has been influenced by or compared to Eugène Ionesco, Maria Irene Fornes, Kenneth Koch, and Edward Albee, among others.
Mickle Maher is a a cofounder of Chicago’s Theater Oobleck, and has taught playwriting and related subjects at the University of Chicago, Columbia College, and Northwestern University.