Join us for a talk with author Rafael Frumkin. His latest book is "Bugsy & Other Stories." Age 18 and up.
Rafael Frumkin (he/they) is a writer of fiction and nonfiction and a professor of creative writing at Southern Illinois University. His first novel, The Comedown, was published in 2018. His second novel, Confidence, was published in 2023. His latest work, Bugsy & Other Stories, was published February 2024. Their writing has appeared in Granta, Guernica, The New York Times, The Washington Post, Virginia Quarterly Review, McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, and The Best American Nonrequired Reading, among others.
The author will read selections from their work, followed by a discussion and Q&A.
Summary for Bugsy & Other Stories:
Frumkin’s latest book is a deliciously entertaining collection of five genre-defying stories that range from downright hilarious to brilliantly unhinged. Taken together, they celebrate a wide variety of human experiences.
In the title story, a queer young adult with bipolar disorder drops out of college in a fog of depression, aimlessly drifting between maintaining their job at a fast food restaurant and dodging their mom’s texts. But when they fall in with a group of sex workers starring in BDSM films, they find radical freedom, love, and community. In other stories, we meet a psychiatrist whose meticulously-maintained life is upended by an Alex Trebek-like voice in his head, an e-girl celebrity who is being courted by a delusional fan, a young boy on the spectrum at odds with a neurotypical world determined to “cure” him, and an elderly woman whose consciousness is being transformed by her oncoming death. With incredible insight, compassion, and honesty, Frumkin unravels each story with tantalizing precision. Sexy and raw—and compulsively readable—this collection offers a look at our innermost selves as we all try to make sense of the world and our place in it.
AGE GROUP: | Adult |
EVENT TYPE: | Writing and Storytelling | Author and Illustrator Events |
The Downtown Library is in the heart of Downtown Bloomington, located right on Kirkwood Avenue. It provides a variety of meeting rooms, spaces for children and teens, a digital creativity center, and much more.
