Authors Sean Bernard, Paul Bergstraesser, and Dylan Bassett present their new work, published by What Books Press.

Join us to celebrate this year’s fiction slate from What Books Press!

On October 11th, Sean Bernard, Paul Bergstraesser, and Dylan Bassett will gather to discuss and read from their new work.

About the participants:

Sean Bernard directs the BA Creative Writing Program at the University of La Verne. He studied creative writing at Arizona, Oregon State, and the Iowa Writers Workshop, and has received grants and fellowships from numerous groups including the National Endowment for the Arts. His novel, Studies in the Hereafter, was published in 2015, and his collection Desert sonorous was awarded the 2014 Juniper Prize. His prose has appeared in The Iowa Review, Santa Monica Review, The Common, Glimmer Train, The Gettysburg Review, and elsewhere.

Paul Bergstraesser’s prose and poetry have appeared in The Barcelona Review, The Portland Review, Another Chicago Magazine, and The American Journal of Poetry. He was awarded a National Endowment for the Arts prose fellowship and has been a finalist for the Autumn House Press fiction prize numerous times. He teaches creative writing and literature at the University of Wyoming and lives in Laramie with his wife and son.

Dylan Bassett is the author of the novel Gad’s Book (2023). His fiction and plays have appeared in Chicago Review, Gulf Coast, Cincinnati Review, and elsewhere. He teaches creative writing at the University of Central Florida and is the founding editor of Bench Editions.

About the featured titles:

Can Writing Be Taught & Other Novel Ideas by Sean Bernard is a singular journey into the dark and tender heart of literature, wandering the minefields of the private act and the public surrender of writing and the fraught tension of a long, complex relationship between a teacher and student, mentor and mentee, lover and lover. Plus a murder mystery spreading out from its center.

The Less Said by Paul Bergstraesser encourages its readers to dive into the obsessive, darkly comic mind of the 60ish narrator, P—. He’s been diagnosed with terminal cansha, he calls it, and decides, along with his wife and college-age son, that a final celebration of life is in order. Over a single weekend, friends and family travel to a destination to fete P— one last time. The wrinkle: P—has hired a killer to dispatch him, the where and when unknown. Against this backdrop, P— compulsively records random memories from his life into a voice recorder, a request from his son. What emerges is an end-of-life story that deftly balances the play of irony and a heartbreaking humanity.

Nearest Exit by Dylan Bassett is a fragmented novel set in airports around the world. It treats the airport as a charged zone of anonymity and exposure where moments of confession, absurdity, and recognition emerge in transit. Composed from conversations and encounters with strangers, it takes up topics such as mental illness, religion, and technology.