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Author Talk: Melissa Chadburn and Laura Warrell

An afternoon of bookish excitement with authors Melissa Chadburn and Laura Warrell!

Our National Novel Writing Month festivities kick off in style with this very special conversation between Melissa Chadburn and Laura Warrell. Join us as the authors read excerpts from their acclaimed debut novels—A Tiny Upward Shove and Sweet, Soft, Plenty Rhythm—and delve into the art of storytelling. You'll have the opportunity to ask questions and get your books signed too!

Registration is required.

Melissa Chadburn’s debut novel A Tiny Upward Shove was longlisted for the 2023 PEN/Hemingway Award. Her extensive reporting on the child welfare system appears in the Netflix docuseries The Trials of Gabriel Fernández. Melissa is a worker lover and through her own labor and literary citizenship strives to upend economic violence. She received a Ph.D. in Creative Writing at the University of Southern California, and lives in greater Los Angeles. Her mother taught her how to sharpen a pencil with a knife and she’s basically been doing that ever since.

Laura Warrell is the author of Sweet, Soft, Plenty Rhythm, a finalist for the 2023 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction and the Barnes & Noble Discover Prize. She has taught Creative Writing and Literature through the Emerging Voices program at PEN America Los Angeles, at Writing Workshops Los Angeles, and at the Berklee College of Music and other academic institutions in Los Angeles and Boston. Laura’s writing has been published in The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Lit Hub, Los Angeles Review of Books, Huffington Post, The Rumpus, The Writer, and other publications.

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