Join us Tuesday, June 7 at 7 p.m. Eastern (4 p.m. Pacific) for a reading and conversation with James Tate Hill and M.C. Armstrong. JT will be reading from his nonfiction memoir, Blind Man’s Bluff and Matt will be reading from his memoir The Mysteries of Haditha. Together they will examine the art of memoir and storytelling. We welcome questions from the audience!
James Tate Hill is the author of a memoir, Blind Man’s Bluff, released August 3, 2021 from W. W. Norton. His fiction debut, Academy Gothic, won the Nilsen Literary Prize for a First Novel. His essays were Notable in the 2019 and 2020 editions of Best American Essays. He serves as fiction editor for Monkeybicycle and contributing editor for Literary Hub, where he writes a monthly audiobooks column. Born in Charleston, WV, he lives in North Carolina with his wife.
In this unfailingly candid yet humorous memoir, Hill discloses the tricks he employed to pass for sighted, from displaying shelves of paperbacks he read on tape to arriving early on first dates so women would have to find him. For fifteen years, Hill hid his blindness from friends, colleagues, and lovers, even convincing himself that if he stared long enough, his blurry peripheral vision would bring the world into focus. At thirty, faced with a stalled writing career, a crumbling marriage, and a growing fear of leaving his apartment, he began to wonder if there was a better way.
M.C. Armstrong is the author of The Mysteries of Haditha, published in 2020 by Potomac Books. The Brooklyn Rail called The Mysteries of Haditha one of the “Best Books of 2020,” and Armstrong’s story was nominated for “Best Memoir” at the 2021 American Book Festival. Armstrong, who grew up in Winchester, Virginia, embedded with Joint Special Operations Forces in Al Anbar Province, Iraq, in 2008. He published extensively on the Iraq war through The Winchester Star. Armstrong is the winner of a Pushcart Prize and his fiction and nonfiction have appeared in Esquire, Consequence Magazine, The Brooklyn Rail, The Missouri Review, The Gettysburg Review, Mayday, Monkeybicycle, Wrath-Bearing Tree, Epiphany, War, Literature, and the Arts, The Literary Review, and other journals and anthologies. He is the co-founder of The Climate Corps and is the guitarist and lead singer-songwriter for Viva la Muerte, an original rock and roll band. His first novel, American Delphi, will be published in the fall of 2022 by Milspeak Books. You can follow him on Twitter @mcarmystrong.
Birch Bark provides editing at all levels, coaching services, and Mix & Meet writing groups, as well as our InConversation events with emerging and established authors. Reach out to us! We want to hear from you: BirchBarkEditing@gmail.com.
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