Jeanne Althouse

Angela Pneuman, Credit: Alex Lauren

Shobha Rao

Tanya Rey

Rick Trushel

Genanne Walsh

James Warner

Join us to celebrate the second installment of the Story Is the Thing, Kepler's quarterly reading series on the theme That Electrifying Moment. 

Jeanne Althouse's  flash fiction and longer stories have appeared in various literary journals and anthologies, including Matter Press, Shenandoah, Pif Magazine, Pindeldyboz , Madison Review, Hawaii Review, the MacGuffin, Red Rock Review, Referential, and Jewel, a publication of Gray Sparrow Press. Her story, “Goran Holds his Breath” was nominated for the Pushcart Prize. An early draft of her first novel was finalist in the Augury Books Editor’s Prize.

Angela Pneuman is the author of the novel Lay It on My Heart and the short story collection Home Remedies. She is a former Stegner fellow at Stanford, where she has taught creative writing since 2001. Her fiction has appeared in Best American Short Stories, New England Review, Ploughshares, Iowa Review, and many other literary journals. Recently she joined the Napa Valley Writers' Conference as its executive director.

Shobha Rao is the author of the collection of short stories, An Unrestored Woman, published in March 2016. Kirkus Reviews called An Unrestored Woman "stunning and relentless." She is the winner of the 2014 Katherine Anne Porter Prize in Fiction. She has been a resident at Hedgebrook and is the recipient of the Elizabeth George Foundation fellowship. Her story "Kavitha and Mustafa" was chosen by T.C. Boyle for inclusion in the Best American Short Stories 2015. She lives in San Francisco. 

Tanya Rey's writing has appeared or is forthcoming in Granta, The Nervous Breakdown, McSweeney’s, Catapult and others. She holds an MFA degree in fiction from New York University and has received fellowships from the San Francisco Writers Grotto, Hambidge Center for the Arts, Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts, the Rona Jaffe Foundation, UCross Foundation and Blue Mountain Center. She lives and writes in Oakland, CA.

Rick Trushel tutors recent immigrants from Mexico and Guatemala, helping them improve their spoken and written language skills. Recently he’s had short pieces published at 101 Words and The SUN magazine. He likes to procrastinate, as he erroneously believes his writing improves when he does this.

Genanne Walsh is the author of Twister, awarded the Big Moose Prize for the Novel from Black Lawrence Press. Twister was also a finalist for the 2016 Housatonic Book Award in Fiction. Excerpts appeared in Puerto del Sol, Blackbird, and Red Earth Review. She lives in San Francisco with her wife and dogs. 

James Warner's short stories have appeared in ZYZZYVA, Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, Santa Monica Review, Mid-American Review, Narrative, and many other literary magazines. He is also the author of All Her Father's Guns, a novel from Numina Press which satirized U.S. politics back in the days when that was even possible.