Cultural Events Calendar

Abby Geni is the author The Body Farm, which was longlisted for the Joyce Carol Oates Prize and the Story Prize; The Lightkeepers, winner of the inaugural Chicago Review of Books Award of Best Fiction; The Wildlands, a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize; and The Last Animal, a finalist for the Orion Book Award. She will be discussing her new novel Children of the Wolf with Mitzi Rapkin, host of the literary podcast, First Draft: A Dialogue on Writing.

In conversation with Natasha Carrizosa

What does it mean to have been born in Tombstone, Arizona?

In Reckon (The University of Arizona Press, 2026), artist Logan Phillips (Poet Laureate of Tucson, Arizona) returns to the fabled site of his childhood to confront the frontier stories he inherited as a boy: outlaw gunfights, Hollywood cowboys, and the racial and gendered power structures that sustained them. Blending poetry, memoir, newspaper clippings, and screenplay, Reckon is a witty and moving examination of sexuality, masculinity, parenting, and the contradictions of loving a landscape built on erasure and “slathered in murder.” With an original, searing voice, Reckon is an essential answer to the tough questions of past and future, inheritance and reinvention, all from the perspective of a boy stuck in the middle.

Phillips will read from Reckon, and be joined in conversation by acclaimed poet Natasha Carrizosa of Ft. Worth, Texas.

Join author Amy Irvine at Explore Books and poet Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer for a discussion of Amy's memoir, Almost Animal and Rosemary's new collection of poetry, The Wonderment.