Join us for the kick-off event for the paperback release of the much-lauded story collection Don't Cry. Following the extraordinary success of her novel Veronica, Mary Gaitskill has returned to short fiction with a luminous new collection of stories—her first in more than ten years. Don't Cry reflects the profound enrichment of life experience typical of Gaitskill's fiction. The author will discuss and sign copies of her new book. Complimentary wine will be served.

About Don't Cry:
In "College Town l980," young people adrift in Ann Arbor debate the meaning of personal strength at the start of the Reagan era; in the urban fairy tale "Mirrorball," a young man steals a girl's soul during a one-night stand; in "The Little Boy," a woman haunted by the death of her former husband is finally able to grieve through a mysterious encounter with a needy child; and in "The Arms and Legs of the Lake," the fallout of the Iraq war becomes disturbingly real for the disparate passengers on a train going up the Hudson—three veterans, a liberal editor, a soldier's uncle, and honeymooners on their way to Niagara Falls.

Each story considers with powerful, original language, the dramatic engagement of the intelligent mind and the craving body—or of the intelligent body and the craving mind—characteristic of Gaitskill's fiction. As intense as Bad Behavior, her first collection of stories, Don't Cry reflects the profound enrichment of life experience. As the stories unfold against the backdrop of American life over the last thirty years, they describe how our social conscience has evolved while basic human truths—"the crude cinder blocks of male and female down in the basement, holding up the house," as one character puts it—remain unchanged.

About Mary Gaitskill:
Mary Gaitskill is also the author of Because They Wanted To (nominated for a PEN/Faulkner Award) and the novel Two Girls, Fat and Thin; and Veronica, nominated for the National Book Award. Gaitskill is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, and her work has appeared in The New Yorker, Harper's, Esquire, The Best American Short Stories, and The O. Henry Prize Stories. She lives in New York.