Union Ave Books welcomes Leah Hampton to present her debut collection of stories F*CKFACE. Leah will be joined in conversation by R.L. Maizes, author of the recent titles OTHER PEOPLE'S PETS and WE LOVE ANDERSON COOPER. This free virtual event takes place on  September 30th @ 7pm (Eastern) on Zoom, send an RSVP to RSVP@unionavebooks.com to attend. Please include the the title of the book F*CKFACE (yes it's okay to do so) in the subject line. We will send the zoom link the day of the event. 

Order F*CKFACE: https://unionavebooks.indielite.org/book/9781250259592

Order OTHER PEOPLE'S PETS: https://unionavebooks.indielite.org/book/9781250304131

Order WE LOVE ANDERSON COOPER: https://unionavebooks.indielite.org/book/9781250304070

DESCRIPTION OF F*CKFACE

F*ckface is a brassy, bighearted debut collection of twelve short stories about rurality, corpses, honeybee collapse, and illicit sex in post-coal Appalachia.

The twelve stories in this knockout collection—some comedic, some tragic, many both at once—examine the interdependence between rural denizens and their environment.

A young girl, desperate for a way out of her small town, finds support in an unlikely place. A ranger working along the Blue Ridge Parkway realizes that the dark side of the job, the all too frequent discovery of dead bodies, has taken its toll on her. Haunted by his past, and his future, a tech sergeant reluctantly spends a night with his estranged parents before being deployed to Afghanistan. Nearing fifty and facing new medical problems, a woman wonders if her short stint at the local chemical plant is to blame. A woman takes her husband’s research partner on a day trip to her favorite place on earth, Dollywood, and briefly imagines a different life.

In the vein of Bonnie Jo Campbell and Lee Smith, Leah Hampton writes poignantly and honestly about a legendary place that’s rapidly changing. She takes us deep inside the lives of the women and men of Appalachia while navigating the realities of modern life with wit, bite, and heart.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR (S)

Leah Hampton is a graduate of the Michener Center for Writers and the winner of the University of Texas’s Keene Prize for Literature, as well as North Carolina’s James Hurst and Doris Betts prizes. Her work has appeared in storySouth, McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, Appalachian Heritage, North Carolina Literary Review, the Los Angeles Times, Ecotone, Electric Literature, and elsewhere. A former college instructor, Hampton lives in and writes about the Blue Ridge Mountains.

R.L. Maizes was born and raised in Queens, New York. She now lives in Boulder County, Colorado. Maizes's short stories have aired on National Public Radio and have appeared in the literary magazines Electric Literature, Witness, Bellevue Literary Review, Slice, and Blackbird, among others. Her essays have been published in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Lilith, and elsewhere. Maizes is an alumna of the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, and the Tin House Summer Writer’s Workshop. Her work has received Honorable Mention in Glimmer Train’s Fiction Open contest, has been a finalist in numerous other national contests, and has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize.