Posted on October 28, 2011 by Anne Touvell

You won't want to miss our fifth and final Evenings with Authors of the Fall 2011 season when Karen Russell will read from her debut novel, Swamplandia!

The accolades for this debut novel catapulted it to the top of bestseller lists from coast to coast. Recipient of the National Book Foundation's 5 Under 35 Award; featured in The New Yorker's list of "20 Under 40 Authors to Watch"; nominated for the Orange Prize, Karen Russell's stellar talent leaves others breathless in her wake. Swamplandia! is a rundown tourist attraction in the Everglades of Florida, owned by a clan of alligator wrestlers. To reveal more would be to rob the reader of the experience of getting to know the BigTree family, each of them vivid and exuberantly rendered characters set in an equally vivid and exuberant story. With wit and intelligence and heartfelt emotion, Russell has created a brilliantly unique story. She is a native of Florida, and is currently a writer-in-residence at Bard College in upstate New York.

She will be reading on Thursday, November 3, at 7:30 p.m. at the Columbus Performing Arts Center, 549 Franklin Avenue. A book signing and an informal coffee and cookie reception will follow the reading. Tickets are $20 general admission in advance and at the door, with discounts for students and seniors. Tickets are available on our website, www.thurberhouse.org, or by calling 614-464-1032 x. 11.

To purchase tickets: http://www.thurberhouse.org/karen-russell.html

Praise for Karen Russell and her work:

"Lavishly imagined and spectacularly crafted... Ravishing, elegiac, funny, and brilliantly inquisitive, Russell's archetypal swamp saga tells a mystical yet rooted tale of three innocents who come of age through trials of water, fire, and air." - Booklist, starred review

"Brilliant, funny, original... Also creepy and sinister... Karen Russell's SWAMPLANDIA! is every bit as good as her short stories promised it would be. This book will not leave my mind." - Stephen King

"This impressively self-assured debut novel may be the best book you'll ever read about a girl trying to save her family's alligator-wrestling theme park." - O, The Oprah Magazine