Ann Packer

reads from

Swim Back to Me

Date

May
3
Tuesday
May 3, 2011
7:00 PM

Location

Harvard Book Store
1256 Massachusetts Ave., Cambridge, MA 02138

Tickets

This event is free; no tickets are required.

Harvard Book Store is pleased to welcome acclaimed short story writer and bestselling novelist ANN PACKER as she reads from her latest work, Swim Back to Me.

Swim Back to Me is a collection of burnished, emotional stories, framed by two unforgettable linked narratives that express the transformation of a single family over the course of a lifetime.

A wife struggles to make sense of her husband’s sudden disappearance. A mother mourns her teenage son through the music collection he left behind. A woman shepherds her estranged parents through her brother’s wedding and reflects on the year her family collapsed. A young man comes to grips with the joy—and vulnerability—of fatherhood. And, in the opening novella, two teenagers from very different families forge a sustaining friendship, only to discover the disruptive and unsettling power of sex.

"Packer doesn’t rely much on dialogue. Her characters are revealed more by the glances they exchange, the comments they don’t make, the silences. And because her subject matter is family and absence and loss, the fill-in-the-blanks technique works audaciously well.... Packer can compress a lifetime of hope and sorrow in a short story, and in a brief paragraph can suggest the unspoken language of marriage and family." —The Miami Herald

Ann Packer
Ann Packer

Ann Packer

Ann Packer received the Great Lakes Book Award for The Dive from Clausen's Pier, which was a national bestseller. She is also the author of Mendocino and Other Stories. She is a past recipient of a James Michener award and a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship. Her fiction has appeared in The New Yorker, Ploughshares, and other magazines, as well as in Prize Stories 1992: The O. Henry Awards. She lives in northern California with her family.

Photo Credit: Jonathan Sprague

Harvard Book Store
1256 Massachusetts Ave., Cambridge, MA 02138

Walking from the Harvard Square T station: 2 minutes

As you exit the station, reverse your direction and walk east along Mass. Ave. in front of the Cambridge Savings Bank. Cross Dunster St. and proceed along Mass. Ave for three more blocks. You will pass Au Bon Pain, JP Licks, and the Adidas Store. Harvard Book Store is located at the corner of Mass. Ave. and Plympton St.

General Info
(617) 661-1515
info@harvardsquarebookstore.com

Media Inquiries
(617) 661-1424 x1
rbcass@harvardsquarebookstore.com

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