Novelist and Poet to be featured during next LTCC Writer's Series

Novelist Josh Weil and Poet Travis Mossotti will be at Lake Tahoe Community College October 8 to present their lastest works. They will read selections from their works, answer audience questions, and sign copies of their books which will be available for sale.

Weil's debut novel, The Great Glass Sea, was a New York Times Editor's Choice, and his novella collection, The New Valley, was awarded the Sue Kaufman Prize from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Weil is a Fulbright Fellow who has written for the New York Times, Granta, Tin House, and Esquire, among others. He also was a National Book Award 5-Under-35 honoree. He lives in the foothills of the Sierra Nevadas.

Lara Vapnyar wrote in the New Your Times Book Review that Weil’s Great Glass Sea is a “fascinating debut novel…hauntingly beautiful… I can’t think of any other novel that depicts fraternal love quite like this...A fantastical vision inspired by bits and pieces of Russian language, history and culture. It is beautifully baffled by the mysterious Russian soul.”

Mossotti has worked and volunteered over the last decade with U.S. government, university, and non-profit organizations on data collection, animal captures, releases, and lab work for various endangered species recovery efforts across North America. In 2011, he was awarded the May Swenson Poetry Award by contest judge Garrison Keillor for his first collection of poems, About the Dead (USU Press, 2011). His chapbook, My Life as an Island, was published by Moon City Press in 2013. He also won the Bona Fide Books Melissa Lanitis Gregory Poetry Award in 2013, which allowed him to publish his newest work, Field Study, along with a book launch and cash prize. For more information about Meyers-based publisher Bona Fide Books and its Poetry Award, visit their website: www.bonafidebooks.com/contests. Mossotti is currently the Poet-in-Residence at the Endangered Wolf Center in St. Louis.

The entire community is welcome to the free event. It will held in the Aspen room (in the library building) on Wednesday, October 8 at 7 p.m. It is sponsored by the LTCC Writers’ Series, Bona Fide Books, and by Poets & Writers, Inc. through a grant received from The James Irvine Foundation.