Georgia College professor Karen McElmurray will read from her new novel, The Motel of the Stars, which has just been published by Sarabande Books, Louisville's literary press. The Motel of the Stars, McElmurray's second novel, was selected for this year's Linda Bruckheimer Series in Kentucky Literature. The book takes place in Kentucky and North Carolina during the 10-year anniversary of Harmonic Convergence, a mystical alignment of planets and an indication of universal peace first celebrated in 1987. McElmurray's sharp satire and gracefully drawn characters are on full display as she delves into the New Age subculture to comment on today's fear-based society.

Our second reader, poet Sean Hill, is also a Georgian, although currently a fellow at Stanford University. Hill's first book of poems, Blood Ties & Brown Liquor, was published in March 2008 to excellent reviews. His poems are firmly rooted in his native Georgia and his experience growing up in a small town in the South.

Also reading is Stanford fellow Elizabeth Bradfield, who will read from her first collection of poems, Interpretive Work. Bradfield is a naturalist as well as a poet, which gives her a unique perspective on the intersection of the natural and the social.