The Writer’s Center welcomes back K.E. Semmel (who was TWC’s Publications and Communications Manager about a decade ago!) for a reading and discussion of his debut novel, The Book of Losman, plus special guest Art Taylor, author of The Adventure of the Castle Thief and Other Expeditions and Indiscretions.
FREE & open to the public. Register below.
K.E. Semmel is a writer and translator. His fiction and nonfiction have appeared in Ontario Review, Lithub, The Writer’s Chronicle, The Southern Review, Washington Post, and elsewhere. His debut novel, The Book of Losman, will be published in October 2024 (SFWP). His translations include novels by, among others, Naja Marie Aidt, Karin Fossum, Simon Fruelund, and Jussi Adler Olsen. He is a former Literary Translation Fellow from the National Endowment for the Arts. He lives in Scottsville, NY with his wife and son, and is the Communications Manager of the Western New York Land Conservancy.
Art Taylor is the Edgar Award-winning author of two short story collections—The Adventure of the Castle Thief and Other Expeditions and Indiscretions and The Boy Detective & The Summer of ’74 and Other Tales of Suspense—and of the novel in stories On the Road with Del & Louise, winner of the Agatha Award for Best First Novel. He won the 2019 Edgar Award for Best Short Story for “English 398: Fiction Workshop,” originally published in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, and he has won three additional Agatha Awards, an Anthony Award, four Macavity Awards, and four Derringer Awards for his short fiction. His work has also appeared in Best American Mystery Stories, and he edited Murder Under the Oaks: Bouchercon Anthology 2015, winner of the Anthony Award for Best Anthology or Collection, and California Schemin’: Bouchercon Anthology 2020. He is an associate professor of English at George Mason University, and he has contributed frequently to the Washington Post, the Washington Independent Review of Books, and Mystery Scene Magazine.
About The Book of Losman
Meet Daniel Losman—an American in Copenhagen, translating books and living a solitary existence. His longtime girlfriend has left him, and the only highlights in his life are encounters with an offbeat artist he thinks he’s in love with and weekends with his three-year-old son, whom he worries has inherited his Tourette Syndrome.
When Losman learns of a new drug designed to locate the root of his Tourette through childhood memories, he’s lured by promises of a cure and visits the mysterious lab that developed the drug. Initially, what he discovers buried deep within his brain rejuvenates him. But the more Losman takes the drug, the more he needs it. Losman steals some of the pills and locks himself away in his apartment, only to quickly find himself trapped inside his own mind. There’s a way out of his head, but it will come at a price…
With intelligence and humor reminiscent of Matt Haig’s The Midnight Library, The Book of Losman explores the depths one man will go to make himself whole.
About The Adventure of the Castle Thief
A man hears a melody in the night and begins a dangerous quest to locate its source. Ghosts of the past haunt the present in hotels, at an office party, and on a date that takes a dark turn. And an elderly woman named Marple sets out to prove she’s every bit as capable as Christie’s own famous sleuth. This second short story collection from Edgar Award winner Art Taylor spans the spectrum of crime fiction-from light-hearted traditional mystery to noir-tinged tales and even toward speculative fiction-and features two previously unpublished stories and an introduction by Martin Edwards.
If you need an accommodation for this event, please contact us at access@writer.org. We will attempt to fulfill all requests, but advance notice is necessary to arrange for some accessibility services.