Area Developments

The year is 1880 and the place is Venice. Marian Evans--whose novels appear under the pen name George Eliot and have made her one of the most famous Englishwomen of her time--has come to this enchanted city on her honeymoon. Newly married to John Cross, twenty years her junior, she hopes to put to rest all of her guilt. The parallel story of a sculptress named Caroline Spingold brings us to Venice one hundred years later, in 1980.

Bamber teaches English and creative writing at Tufts University. Her fiction, poetry, and essays have appeared in the Harvard Review, Ploughshares, Raritan, New York Times Book Review, and elsewhere. Metropolitan Tang is her first book of poetry.

Rivard is the author of Bewitched Playground, Wise Poison, which won the James Laughlin Award of the Academy of American Poets, and Torque. He teaches at Tufts University and in the M.F.A. Writing program at Vermont College. He lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

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Set at the turn of the twenty-first century in China along the Tumen River, which separates northeast China and North Korea, The Ginseng Hunter is an unforgettable portrait of life along a fragile border. While a lone ginseng hunter spends his days up in the mountains looking for ginseng and preparing for winter while tragic events unfold across the river. His story is based on actual events that are happening today in North Korea, also known as the DPRK, and along the Northeast border of China, to where many North Korean refugees are fleeing.

Hemon was born in Sarajevo. He and his family fled Bosnia soon after the violence began in 1992. They left behind not only relatives but a comfortable middle class existence. Hemon settled in Chicago due in large part to its substantial Bosnian population. He has assimilated through his passion for soccer and by teaching English to other immigrants. Before he became the success he is today he worked assiduously at his writing and knowledge of English. He wrote his first story in English in 1995 and has now completed three books.

Inspired by the true life experiences of Henry Winkler, the Hank Zipzer series, about the world's greatest underachiever, is funny, touching, and deals with learning differences in a gentle and humorous manner. The Life of Me is #14 in the Hank Zipzer series.

The Espinosas will be celebrating the launch of their new picture book. They met while working as graphic designers in NYC. They now live in Cambridge with their family.

In her funny and wistful new book, Reeve Lindbergh contemplates entering a new stage in life, turning sixty, the period her mother, Anne Morrow Lindbergh, once described as "the youth of old age." With a wry sense of humor, Reeve contemplates the infirmities of the aging body, as well as the many new drugs that treat these maladies.

Rose Moss was born in Johannesburg, South Africa and has lived in the United States since 1964. She has published two novels, The Family Reunion, which was short-listed for a National Book Award, and The Terrorist, and a work of non-fiction, Shouting at the Crocodile. Her non-fiction has appeared in the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Atlantic Monthly and other similar publications and in scholarly journals.

Please note: This event is part of the monthly PEN/NE reading series and is held at the Hotel Marlowe in Cambridge.

Through four ingeniously interlocking narratives, Dara, a counselor; Cameron, Dara's father; Abigail, an aspiring actress; and Sean, an academic and boyfriend to Abigail, the reader gradually comes to understand how these characters' lives are shaped by both chance and determination. Whatever the source, there is no mistaking the tragedy that strikes the house on Fortune Street.