Alyson Hagy and Ben Percy

Indie purists should have no argument with this mini-showcase of authors from Graywolf Press, reading at one of the Twin Cities' last surviving mom-and-pop sellers of new books. Hagy was raised in Virginia but now lives and teaches in Laramie, Wyoming, and is the author of three story collections and two novels. She'll read from her latest, the short novel Snow, Ashes, about two childhood friends, both scarred veterans of the Korean War, one of whom makes a perhaps unwise, late-in-life reentry into the Wyoming sheep business. Percy currently teaches at the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point, but grew up in central Oregon, where much of his new story collection, Refresh, Refresh, is set. The elegant title story, featured in the 2006 edition of Best American Short Stories, shows the kids of tiny Crow, Oregon, fighting, hot-dogging on their bikes, and pining for emails from the dads, all reservists serving in Iraq.
Tue., Oct. 23, 7 p.m., 2007