On Tuesday, July 9 at 7pm in the OHCA Gallery, O’Hanlon Center for the Arts are hosting readers from a trio of brilliant writers. (Free but RSVP encouraged).
The great Molly Giles is reading with Katy Butler and Abby Wasserman on July 9.
“Please join us for an evening of readings from three very talented Marin authors,” says Erma Murphy, executive director of the OHCA.
Molly Giles is an award-winning fiction writer. Her first collection of stories, ROUGH TRANSLATIONS won the Flannery O’Connor Prize for Short Fiction, the Boston Globe Award, and the Bay Area Book Reviewers award. Four subsequent collections—CREEK WALK, BOTHERED, ALL THE WRONG PLACES, and WIFE WITH KNIFE, have also won awards, including the Small Press Best Fiction Award, the California Commonwealth Silver Medal for Fiction, the Spokane Short Fiction Award, and the Leapfrog Press Global Fiction Prize.
She published her first novel, IRON SHOES, in 2000, and twenty-three years later, published its sequel, THE HOME FOR UNWED HUSBANDS. Giles has taught fiction writing at San Francisco State University, University of Hawaii, San Jose State University, the National University of Ireland at Galway, the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville, and at numerous writing conferences, including The Community of Writers and Naropa.
Her work has been included in many anthologies including the O.Henry and Pushcart Prize (three times), and she has received grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Arkansas Arts Council. She has won the National Book Critics Circle Award for Book Reviewing, been awarded residences at MacDowell, Yadoo, and The House of Literature in Paros, Greece.
Molly Giles’ first book of non-fiction, her memoir “Life Span” was just released to critical acclaim. Molly has read at OHCA before and when asked to do so again she said yes if Katy and Abby join her! This will be an inspiring evening with all three reading vignettes from their lives.
Katy Butler is a Buddhist journalist and author of The Art of Dying Well. Her memoir, Knocking on Heaven’s Door was named a New York Times Notable Book of the Year and was chosen by Publishers Weekly as one of the ten best memoirs of 2013.
She is at work on a new memoir about her search for love and enlightenment in her wild 20s and 30s.
Her writing has appeared in the New York Times Magazine, Tricycle, the Buddhist Quarterly, Best American Essays, Best Buddhist Writing, and Best American Science Writing. Among other honors, she is a past finalist for a National Magazine Award and the Dayton Literary Peace Prize. She will read from her new memoir-in-progress.
She lives in Mill Valley.
Abby Wasserman’s eight published books include Mary Tuthill Lindheim: Art & Inspiration; Praise, Vilification & Sexual Innuendo or How to Be a Critic: The Selected Writings of John L. Wasserman; and Tosca’s Paris Adventure, an illustrated children’s book.
Also a classical music reviewer for classicalsonoma.org, she was Editor of the Mill Valley Historical Society’s annual magazine Review from 2013 to 2024 and has been facilitator of a weekly creative writing class at O’Hanlon Center for the Arts for the last two decades.
She lives in Mill Valley.