The powerHouse Arena invites you to
a reading and signing

Safe as Houses

by Marie-Helene Bertino

Saturday, October 6, 6–8 PM

The powerHouse Arena · 37 Main Street (corner of Water & Main St.) · DUMBO, Brooklyn
For more information, please call 718.666.3049
RSVP appreciated: RSVP@powerHouseArena.com

Marie-Helene Bertino, winner of the 2012 Iowa Short Fiction Award celebrates the release of her debut collection of short stories. She will be reading alongside Jim Shepard, author of, most recently, the short story collection You Think That's Bad. This event is brought to you in part by Electric Literature's Recommended Reading.

About Safe as Houses:

Safe as Houses, the debut story collection of Marie-Helene Bertino, proves that not all homes are shelters. The titular story revolves around an aging English professor who, mourning the loss of his wife, robs other people's homes of their sentimental knick-knacks. In "Free Ham," a young dropout wins a ham after her house burns down and refuses to accept it. "Has my ham done anything wrong?" she asks when the grocery store manager demands that she claim it.

In "Carry Me Home, Sisters of Saint Joseph," a failed commercial writer moves into the basement of a convent and inadvertently discovers the secrets of the Sisters of Saint Joseph. A girl, hoping to talk her brother out of enlisting in the army, brings Bob Dylan home for Thanksgiving dinner in the quiet, dreamy "North Of." In "The Idea of Marcel," Emily, a conservative, elegant girl, has dinner with the idea of her ex-boyfriend, Marcel. In a night filled with baffling coincidences, including Marcel having dinner with his idea of Emily, she wonders why we tend to be more in love with ideas than with reality. In and out of the rooms of these gritty, whimsical stories roam troubled, funny people struggling to reconcile their circumstances to some kind of American Ideal and failing, over and over.

The stories of Safe as Houses are magical and original and help answer such universal and existential questions as: How far will we go to stay loyal to our friends? Can we love a man even though he is inches shorter than our ideal? Why doesn't Bob Dylan ever have his own smokes? And are there patron saints for everything, even lost socks and bad movies?

All homes are not shelters. But then again, some are. Welcome to the home of Marie-Helene Bertino.

About the Author:

Marie-Helene Bertino's collection of short stories SAFE AS HOUSES received The 2012 Iowa Short Fiction Award, judged by Jim Shepard, and will be published in Fall 2012. Her stories have appeared or are forthcoming in The Pushcart Prize Anthology XXXIII, North American Review, Mississippi Review, Inkwell, The Indiana Review, American Short Fiction, Five Chapters, West Branch, Electric Literature's Recommended Reading, Storyville, The Common and Mississippi Review's 30 (an anthology of 30 years of publishing). She received a Pushcart Prize in 2007 and a Special Mention in 2011. She hails from Philadelphia and lives in Brooklyn, where for six years she was the Associate Editor of One Story. She has taught for The Gotham Writer's Workshop and One Story's Emerging Writer's Workshop and was an Emerging Writer Fellow at NYC's Center for Fiction.

About Jim Shepard:

Jim Shepard is the author of six novels, including most recently Project X, and four story collections, including most recently You Think That's Bad (Knopf, March 2011). His third collection, Like You'd Understand, Anyway, was a finalist for the National Book Award and won The Story Prize. Project X won the 2005 Library of Congress/Massachusetts Book Award for Fiction, as well as the ALEX Award from the American Library Association. His short fiction has appeared in, among other magazines, Harper's, McSweeney's, The Paris Review, The Atlantic Monthly, Esquire, DoubleTake, the New Yorker, Granta, Zoetrope: All-Story, and Playboy, and he was a columnist on film for the magazine The Believer. Four of his stories have been chosen for the Best American Short Stories, and one for a Pushcart Prize. He teaches at Williams College and in the Warren Wilson MFA program, and lives in Williamstown with his wife Karen Shepard, his three children, and two beagles.

About Recommended Reading:

Recommended Reading, a free digital magazine by Electric Literature, publishes one story a week, each chosen by today's best authors or editors. The nights' readers are great fans of one another: Jim Shepard recommended Marie-Helene Bertino's "North Of" in Recommended Reading vol. 1 issue 3.

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