The Writer’s Center welcomes writers Melanie McCabe and Brad Barkley for a reading from their respective novels, Road Longer Than Memory and The Reel Life of Zara Kegg.
FREE & open to the public. RSVP below.
Melanie McCabe is a writer of poems, essays, memoir, and most recently, fiction. She is a lifelong Virginian and was a high school English and creative writing teacher in Arlington for twenty-two years. Her debut novel, Road Longer Than Memory, will be published by Oceanview Publishing on June 2, 2026. Her forthcoming book of poems, All The Signs Were There, won the Longleaf Poetry Prize and will be out in the winter of 2026. Her memoir, His Other Life: Searching For My Father, His First Wife, and Tennessee Williams, won the 2016 University of New Orleans Publishing Lab Prize and was published in the fall of 2017. Previous books of poems include: The Night Divers (Terrapin Books), What The Neighbors Know (FutureCycle Press) and History of the Body (David Robert Books.) Her essays have appeared in The Washington Post, Reader’s Digest, Shenandoah, Cumberland River Review, Sweet, Forge Literary Magazine and elsewhere.
Brad Barkley is the author of the novels Money, Love and Alison’s Automotive Repair Manual, two collections of short stories, and three YA novels with Penguin (including Scrambled Eggs at Midnight). His work has been translated into five languages. His short stories have appeared in 40+ magazines, including Fractured Lit, The Southern Review, The Virginia Quarterly Review, Glimmer Train, and USA Today. He’s won numerous awards, including Four Individual Artist Awards from the State of Maryland, and a Creative Writing Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts.
About Road Longer Than Memory
Sometimes the road home runs through everything you tried to forget
After a failed relationship and an unsettled teaching career, Sara Barlow returns to her childhood home in Arlington, Virginia, hoping for a fresh start. But when she applies for a job at her old high school, a chance glimpse into the gymnasium shakes her to the core—she spots the man she suspects was involved in a classmate’s violent death a decade earlier.
Haunted by the past, Sara confronts the memories she’s spent years trying to suppress: her sister Suzanne’s fatal car crash, her secret summer with the reckless Devlin Barrie, and the anonymous 911 call she made after witnessing what she believes was a murder. As the construction of Interstate 66 physically fractures her community, Sara grapples with emotional fault lines of her own—guilt, silence, and buried truth.
Set against the backdrop of suburban upheaval in the 1970s and ’80s, Road Longer Than Memory is a compelling story of memory, reckoning, and the cost of what we leave unsaid.
About The Reel Life of Zara Kegg
Love, grief, Godzilla, and one very weird winter at the beach…
Three years after her mother’s death, 16-year-old Zara is still settling into life in Carolina Beach, N.C., where she knows almost no one. Working as the lone projectionist at the Palace Theatre—a rundown movie house that shows only vintage ’50s sci-fi and horror flicks—Zara spends her nights in a dusty booth, fueled by coffee, pushups, and the occasional existential crisis (with popcorn).
Then she meets Zachary, whose “Z” name feels like fate. His clothes don’t match, his stories don’t always add up, and he might be the most interesting person she’s ever met. As their friendship deepens into something more, Zara learns about the struggles Zachary hides beneath his charm—and wonders if trust is possible.
When her boss tasks her with organizing a Valentine’s Day Godzilla marathon—complete with 150 inflatable Godzillas on the roof—Zara must confront the chaos in her own life. Like any good Godzilla movie, the big question remains: who will survive, and who will be crushed?
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