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A Small Crowd of Strangers

A Small Crowd of Strangers

Current price: $18.00
Publication Date: September 12th, 2020
Publisher:
Forest Avenue Press
ISBN:
9781942436430
Pages:
396
Usually Ships in 1 to 5 Days

Description

Joanna Rose is a longtime independent bookseller; she founded the Powell's Books reading series and ran it for fifteen years. Little Miss Strange, her debut novel, earned critical praise and an award from the Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association. In today's political climate, the topic of abortion has become a lightning rod for discussion; A Small Crowd of Strangers brings us inside how religion impacts one man's feelings on his wife's rights. Fans of the quirky women characters in Maria Semple's fiction, particularly Where'd You Go, Bernadette?, will enjoy hapless and heartfelt librarian Pattianne Anthony. Joanna Rose's ability to write relationships will appeal to fans of Anne Tyler and Ann Patchett. Family, at its core, is who you choose as your community, according to the lessons that Pattianne Anthony learns over the course of the book; her new friends on the edge of the world include a house full of adoptees, a priest in the process of losing his credentials, and a convenience store owner. Joanna Rose has a lifetime of literary connections in the Pacific Northwest in particular, including through her days as a bookseller, her work at Literary Arts, and her two-plus decades of teaching writers at the Pinewood Table. Positioning this title in fall 2020 may earn readers seeking long, delicious reads to escape the headlines.

About the Author

Joanna Rose is the author of the award-winning novel Little Miss Strange, which earned the Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association Award. Other work has appeared in ZYZZYVA, Windfall Journal, Cloudbank, Artisan Journal, Northern Lights, Oregon Humanities, High Desert Journal, VoiceCatcher, and Bellingham Review. Her essay That Thing With Feathers was cited as Notable in 2015 Best American Essays. She established the Powell's Books reading series and curated it for fifteen years. She is an Atheneum Fellow in Poetry, and cohosts the prose critique group Pinewood Table. She also works with youth through Literary Arts' Writers in the Schools and with Young Musicians & Artists. She lives in Portland Oregon's urban southeast side with her husband and, at any given time, several dogs.