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The U.S. Embassy Literature Series

Rebecca Rukeyser reads from The Homestead – a novel in progress

From 1862 to 1986 the Homestead Act allotted 160 acres of land free of charge to any American man who could work the land for five years. The last decades of this Act populated Alaska, a state that still bears the nickname “The Last Frontier.”

Set in the early years of the 21st century, The Homestead looks into the final days of one of these Alaskan homesteads. Having lived on an unpopulated island in the Kodiak archipelago for decades, Lew and Megan Jenkins face economic strain and open their property to tourism. Their “remote lodge” aims to give vacationers a sense of the real West and the real Alaska—a pristine landscape molded by hard work. But Jenkins’ lodge is failing as a tourist destination and their marriage is dissolving.

Rebecca Rukeyser is a fiction writer, co-founder of the Berlin Writers’ Workshop, and the recipient of a 2018 “Arbeitsstipendium nichtdeutschsprachige Literatur” –  Grant for Non-German Literature, awarded by the Berlin Senatsverwaltung für Kultur und Europa. Her work has appeared in such publications as Best American NonRequired Reading, The Massachusetts Review, and ZYZZYVA. She holds an MFA in Fiction from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and teaches creative writing at Heinrich Heine Universität.

The U.S. Embassy Literature Series

Yaa Gyasi will read from her critically acclaimed debut novel, Homegoing (Knopf, 2016), which probes the legacy of the slave trade as it impacted two sides of an Akan family. Homegoing received 2017’s American Book Award, the National Book Critics’ Circle’s John Leonard Award, and PEN’s Hemingway award for debut fiction.

Yaa Gyasi was born in Mampong, Ghana, and raised in Huntsville, Alabama. She received a BA in English from Stanford University and MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, where she held a Dean’s Graduate Research Fellowship. Gyasi’s short stories have appeared in African American Review, Guernica, Callaloo, and Granta, which designated her a Best Young American Novelist in 2017.

Reads from her novel Crimson Lake.

Six minutes in the wrong place at the wrong time—that’s all it took to ruin Sydney Detective Ted Conkaffey’s life. Accused but not convicted of the brutal abduction of a 13-year-old girl, Ted is now a free man—and public enemy number one. He flees north to keep a low profile amidst the steamy, croc-infested wetlands of Crimson Lake.

There, Ted’s lawyer introduces him to private investigator Amanda Pharrell, herself a convicted murderer. Perhaps it’s the self-isolation and murderous past that makes her so adept at tracking lost souls in the wilderness, but her latest target, missing author Jake Scully, has a life more shrouded in secrets than her own.

Not entirely convinced Amanda is a cold-blooded killer, Ted agrees to help with her investigation, a case full of deception and obsession, while secretly digging into her troubled past.

Candice Fox received Australia’s most prestigious prize for crime fiction, the NED KELLY AWARD, both in 2014 and 2015!

Sechs Minuten – mehr braucht es nicht, um das Leben von Detective Ted Conkaffey vollständig zu ruinieren. Die Anklage gegen ihn wird zwar aus Mangel an Beweisen fallengelassen, doch alle Welt glaubt zu wissen, dass einzig und allein er es gewesen ist, der Claire entführt hat. Um der gesellschaftlichen Ächtung zu entgehen, zieht sich der Ex-Cop nach Crimson Lake, eine Kleinstadt im Norden Australiens, zurück.
Dort trifft er Amanda Pharrell, die ganz genau weiß, was es heißt, Staatsfeind Nr. 1 zu sein. Vor Jahren musste sie wegen angeblichen Mordes ins Gefängnis. Nun tun sich die beiden Außenseiter zusammen und arbeiten als Privatdetektive. Ihr Fall: Ein berühmter Schriftsteller mit Doppelleben und kaputter Familie ist verschwunden, die örtliche Polizei behindert die Arbeit der beiden mit harschen Methoden. Dann platzt das Inkognito von Conkaffey, die Medien erzeugen Hysterie. Lynchstimmung macht sich breit. Während er den Fall seiner neuen Partnerin wieder aufrollt und sie versucht, ihn zu entlasten, nimmt der Fall des Schriftstellers überraschende Wendungen …

Candice Fox is the middle child of a large, eccentric family from Sydney’s western suburbs composed of half-, adopted and pseudo siblings. The daughter of a parole officer and an enthusiastic foster-carer, Candice spent her childhood listening around corners to tales of violence, madness and evil as her father relayed his work stories to her mother and older brothers.

Bankstown born and bred, she failed to conform to military life in a brief stint as an officer in the Royal Australian Navy at age eighteen. At twenty, she turned her hand to academia, and taught high school through two undergraduate and two postgraduate degrees.

Hades, Candice Fox’s first novel, won the Ned Kelly Award for best debut in 2014. The sequel, Eden, won the Ned Kelly Award for best crime novel in 2015, making Candice only the second author to win these accolades back-to-back. Her third novel, Fall, was shortlisted for the 2016 Ned Kelly and Davitt awards.

In 2015 Candice began collaborating with U.S.-American crime writer, James Patterson. Their first novel together, Never Never, set in the vast Australian outback, was a huge bestseller in Australia and went straight to number 1 on the New York Times bestseller list in the U.S. and also to the top of the charts in the UK. The sequel, Fifty Fifty, will be released in August 2017. They have also co-written a prequel novella, Black & Blue, as part of the James Patterson BookShots series.

Candice Fox lives in Sydney.

Candice Fox stammt aus einer eher exzentrischen Familie, die sie zu manchen ihrer literarischen Figuren inspirierte. Nach einer nicht so braven Jugend und einem kurzen Zwischenspiel bei der Royal Australian Navy widmet sie sich jetzt der Literatur, mit akademischen Weihen und sehr unakademischen Romanen. Für den ersten und zweiten Teil ihrer Trilogie, Hades und Eden, wurde sie 2014 und 2015 mit dem Ned Kelly Award ausgezeichnet.

Pic: © Penguin Random House Australia / Suhrkamp Verlag.

The U.S. Embassy Literature Series

Nickolas Butler reads from his novel The Hearts of Men (Die Herzen der Männer, Klett-Cotta, 2018)

Camp Chippewa, 1962. Nelson Doughty, age thirteen, social outcast and overachiever, is the Bugler, sounding the reveille proudly each morning. Yet this particular summer marks the beginning of an uncertain and tenuous friendship with a popular boy named Jonathan.

Over the years, Nelson, irrevocably scarred from the Vietnam War, becomes Scoutmaster of Camp Chippewa, while Jonathan marries, divorces, and turns his father’s business into a highly profitable company. And when something unthinkable happens at a camp get-together with Nelson as Scoutmaster and Jonathan’s teenage grandson and daughter-in-law as campers, the aftermath demonstrates the depths—and the limits—of Nelson’s selflessness and bravery.

Nickolas Butler is the author of the novel Shotgun Lovesongs and a collection of short stories entitled Beneath the Bonfire.
Born in Allentown, Pennsylvania and raised in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, he was educated at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the University of Iowa Writer’s Workshop. His work has appeared in Ploughshares, The Christian Science Monitor, The Kenyon Review Online, Narrative, The Progressive, and many other publications. Along the way he has worked as: a meatpacker, a Burger King maintenance man, a liquor store clerk, a coffee roaster, an office manager, an author escort, an inn-keeper (twice), and several other odd vocations. He received numerous prizes and awards for his work.

The U.S. Embassy Literature Series:

Holly-Jane Rahlens reads from her novel Infinitissimo

“The I of my heart says hello to the you of yours.”

The year is 2264. Despite incredible technical advances, scientists of the twenty-third century are at a loss on how to solve the problem of a decimated human population. The young historian Finn Nordstrom, a specialist for turn-of-the-millennium popular culture, is asked to translate newly discovered diaries written in extinct German. Do the vintage diaries of a young girl from the early twenty-first century hold a secret that can revitalize humankind?

Finn Nordstrom lives in a passionless but otherwise worry-free and peaceful world shaped by community spirit, leaps in science, and the promise of immortality. All is well until he begins decoding Eliana’s diaries. Following the progression of her life from page to page, he becomes fascinated by the young girl blooming into womanhood right before his eyes. Asked to test the authenticity of a virtual-reality game set in the twenty-first century, Finn is stunned to find himself face-to-face with the girl. Caught up in a whirlwind of intrigue orchestrated by powerful physicists, Finn is sent unwittingly on a dangerous mission through time.

“Enthralling, knowledgeable and inventive. … A page turner!” dpa/APA

“Rahlens creates an absorbing social utopia, examines the principles of collective harmony, and clothes it in an utterly intriguing and touching love story.”  NDR

“Infinitissimo is touching, witty, spiked with a wealth of original details, and absolutely delightful. It’s a book for readers of all ages!” ekz

“Rahlens’ imagination is as far-reaching as the universe, her word creations are absolutely brilliant and the story is not just fun and games, but profound, philosophical and universal. Infinitissimo forces us to confront what’s important in our lives today.”  Aviva

Holly-Jane Rahlens, a born New Yorker, grew up in Brooklyn and Queens and graduated from Queens College (City University of New York). She moved to Berlin, Germany, soon after, where she has lived virtually all her adult life. While remaining an American citizen, she has flourished in the German media world, working in radio, television, and film as an actress, producer and commentator as well as creating a series of highly praised one-woman shows. She writes fiction for readers of all ages. In 2003 her first novel for teens, Prince William, Maximilian Minsky and Me, earned the prestigious Deutscher Jugendliteraturpreis as the best young adult novel published in Germany. In 2006 the Association of Jewish Libraries named it a Sydney Taylor Honor Book. It has since been published in eight languages and was adapted in 2007 into the motion picture Max Minsky and Me, which has garnered praise and awards around the world.