Novels In Progress
Literature Department at Parkway Central Library
Molly’s Books & Records in partnership with the Literature Department of the Free Library of Philadelphia presents a salon-style reading and conversation featuring the work of writers deep in the process of a long project. This program is in room 108. Admission is free and open to the public.
Molly Russakoff has had a long career as a poet, including a stint in the early days of The Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics, poetry editor of The Philadelphia Independent and a Pew Fellowship in 1993. Her poems have been published in The Paris Review, American Poetry Review and other literary journals. She co-owns Molly’s Books & Records, in South Philly’s Italian Market with her husband Joe Ankenbrand.
Book Title: Haunt
In a city plagued by gentrification, three queer friends navigate identity politics, the gig economy, nonmonogamy, and neoliberal corporate conspiracies. Narrated by a mycelial network of ghosts, Haunt explores the murky barrier between the internet and reality, and the friendships that sustain us amid the violence of capitalism.
Author: Julian Shendelman lives with his husband and dogs near Philadelphia. His work has been published by Nomadic Press, Bat City Review, Philadelphia Stories, and Cleaver Magazine, and is forthcoming from Thirty West. He was a fellow at the Lambda Lit Retreat for Emerging LGBTQ+ Writers (2012) and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts (2022). Julian is the co-founder of the Bay Area Trans Writers Workshop, the founder of Collective Lit, and, as of May 2024, the co-director of Blue Stoop.
Book Title: Long Shadow
Somedays Elly wakes up as a high schooler about to graduate and Nora wakes up on a post-apocalyptic Earth that has stopped rotating. Other days, their minds switch between the bodies in those dimensions, never knowing which world they’ll wake up in. They communicate with each other through a journal that has helped them navigate their shared lives toward a teaching career on the living Earth and a promised land on the dead world. Things have gone well enough until they start to disagree on their end goals.
Author:Jake Chase lives in Philadelphia with his wife and son. He has poems published in Lucky Jefferson and Literari. He has also presented works at Lehigh University’s Literature and Social Justice Graduate Student Conference and at Duquesne University’s Cross-Currents Conference. Jake currently teaches English and creative writing at AIM Academy, where he is also the school’s literary magazine coordinator.
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Literature Department
Pepper Hall (Room 207)
215-686-5402
Parkway Central Library
1901 Vine Street (between 19th and 20th Streets on the Parkway)
Philadelphia, PA 19103
1-833-TALK FLP (825-5357)