Events

Please join us for this IN PERSON author event with Jess Walter, at 7pm on Wednesday, August 31, at the Kenworthy Performing Arts Center. Be sure to buy your book through BookPeople of Moscow to get a ticket to this author event; your book purchase includes event admission!  To find out if tickets will be available at the door, please check back here on August 31st.

Jess Walter is the author of ten books, most recently the short story collection The Angel of Rome. His other books include the national bestseller The Cold Millionsand the #1 New York Times bestseller, Beautiful Ruins; The Zero, a finalist for the National Book Award; and Citizen Vince, winner of the Edgar Award. His work has been published in 35 languages and his short fiction has appeared three times in Best American Short Stories.

Beloved for acclaimed novels like The Cold Millions and the #1 New York Times bestseller Beautiful Ruins, Jess Walter is a “superb storyteller” (Boston Globe) who taps the same deep and plentiful wellspring of talent in his short fiction. Walter’s trademark versatility, insight, and wit are on full display in THE ANGEL OF ROME (Harper; June 28, 2022; $27.99), a captivating collection of twelve stories that finds an array of contemporary characters living as we live now, craving fame or reinvention that often obscures the true person behind the mask. 

The stories span the years 2014 to 2022, with some first appearing in Esquire, Harper’s, Tin House, as well as Best American Short Stories and Pushcart Prize anthologies. Three are appearing in print for the first time, including the title story—a poignant coming-of-age story that takes readers back to Italy and the world of film—that began life as a popular audio original, a collaboration with actor Edoardo Ballerini, the award-winning narrator of Beautiful Ruins. As one might expect from Walter, the diverse stories span not only many locales but give us a dazzling range of voices as well: A teenage girl measures herself against her absent mother, two climate scientists have an end-of-the-world blowout, and, in a metafictional take on writing and fate, a fiction writer eavesdrops on an elderly couple.

“I will always love novels—writing them and reading them,” Walter muses. “But I go through periods where all I want is the powerful brevity of a short story. The pandemic has been one of those times for me. I want to be on the move, to venture around in time and space, to go to Rome for a few days, then to New York for a Broadway matinee and a lunch, then to a hipster party where a movie star might show up …. A story collection for me is also like a great yard sale. Here are the treasures I’ve collected over the last few years. And now, for a fraction of what they cost me in time and energy, I offer them to you. There are no broken VCRs here. Or worn-out blenders. These are a dozen or so really valuable stories that I am proud to have made, proud to put out in my yard, proud to share with you.”

“Walter brings [his] outlook to short story writing easily, and with a vengeance,” the New York Times’ Janet Maslin said of his first collection, We Live in Water, which Barack Obama chose as a favorite book of 2019. With THE ANGEL OF ROME, Jess Walter takes his always bighearted narrative art in exciting directions.