Elk River Arts & Lectures presents American Book Award winner and Livingston native Shann Ray on Thursday, Oct. 23, at 7 pm, to discuss his new novel Where Blackbirds Fly. The free event takes place at Elk River Books, 122 S. 2nd St. and will include a book signing and reception. His visit will include working with local students as part of the Youth Climate Summit.
“A novel in five novellas, Where Blackbirds Fly offers a prismatic deep dive into the human heart through fierce narratives of intimacy both lovely and heartbreaking. Countering social upheavals, Ray affirms the power of empathy, the wisdom of wilderness, and the felt presence of divine mystery echoed in the recurring appearances of blackbirds, as if etching flight patterns of mercy over the landscapes of human life.”
Charles Johnson, author of Middle Passage, notes: “With its large cast of wounded, complex, and ethnically diverse characters, all yearning for love, Where Blackbirds Fly creates a world that looks very much like America. That it does so with rich lyricism and polymathic learning is a testament to the love Shann Ray himself has for humankind.”
Ray is the author of American Masculine, American Copper and several selections of poetry. He teaches leadership and forgiveness studies at Gonzaga University and poetry at Stanford. A National Endowment for the Arts Fellow and group Fulbright recipient to South Africa, through his research in forgiveness and genocide, he has served as a visiting scholar in Asia, Europe, Africa and the Americas, and as a poetry mentor for the PEN America Prison and Justice Writers Program. Having collaborated as a visiting poet with painter Makoto Fujimura on a United Nations grant titled Intercultural Dialogues through Beauty as a Language of Peace, Ray is also an International Book Award winner, a three-time High Plains Book Award winner, Bread Loaf Fellow, Bakeless Prize winner, and winner of the Foreword Book of the Year Readers’ Choice Award. His poems and prose have been featured in Poetry, Esquire, Narrative, McSweeneyy’s, Prairie Schooner, Poetry International, Big Sky Journal, and the American Journal of Poetry.
For those who can’t attend in person, the event will live-stream at YouTube.com/ElkRiverBooks.
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