Elk River Arts & Lectures continues its fall series with a free reading and book signing by award-winning author of Cowboys and East Indians, Nina McConigley, on Thursday, October 8, 2015, at Elk River Books, 120 N. Main St. in downtown Livingston. The event begins at 7 p.m. and is open to the public.
Winner of the PEN Open Book Award and the High Plains Book Award, McConigley was born in Singapore and grew up in Wyoming. She holds an MFA from the University of Houston and an MA from the University of Wyoming. Her work has appeared in the New York Times, Virginia Quarterly Review, American Short Fiction, and the Asian American Literary Review, among others. She teaches at the University of Wyoming.
Her short-story collection Cowboys and East Indians explores the immigrant experience and the collisions of cultures in the American West as seen through the eyes of outsiders. From Indian motel owners to a kleptomaniac foreign exchange student, from a cross-dressing, sari-wearing cowboy to oil-rig workers, from an adopted cowgirl to a medical tourist in India—the characters in these stories are lonely and are looking for connection, and yet they can also be problematic and aggressive in order to survive in an isolated landscape.
O Magazine notes that “the real achievement is the author’s mix of hilarity and intelligence,” and Luis Alberto Urrea praises it as “a fresh and wise view of a new world—at turns delightful and sad, but surprising at every turn. I love this work, and I know it begins a fine career.”
During her visit, McConigley will also work in the classroom with Park High students. The events are made possible in part by a grant from Humanites Montana and co-sponsored by the Murray Hotel.
Elk River Arts & Lectures is a non-profit organization that seeks to bring writers to Livingston for free public readings, and also to provide opportunities for those writers to interact with local public school students. For more information, call 333-2330 or visit elkriverarts.org.
0 Comments