To celebrate the release of the paperback edition of his award-winning collection of short stories Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned, Wells Tower will read at Magers & Quinn Booksellers (3038 Hennepin Ave S, Minneapolis; 612/822-4611).

Well’s Tower’s book was a smash hit when it was first published in 2009. Michiko Kakutani said in The New York Times, “This arresting debut collection of stories decisively establishes Mr. Tower as a writer of uncommon talent.” Wells Tower’s version of America is touched with the seamy splendor of the dropout, the misfit: failed inventors, boozy dreamers, hapless fathers, and wayward sons. A man is booted out of his home after his wife discovers that the print of a bare foot on the inside of his car’s windshield doesn’t match her own. A boy runs off to the carnival after his stepfather bites him in a brawl. And in the most talked-about story in the collection, Viking marauders descend on a much-plundered island, hoping some mayhem will shake off the winter blahs.

“Wells Tower’s stories are written, thrillingly, in authentic American vernacular–violent, funny, bleak, and beautiful. You need to read them, now.”–Michael Chabon, author of The Yiddish Policemen’s Union and The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay

Details are here.–David E