Third Place Books welcomes writer, teacher, and editor Ronit Plank to our Ravenna store! Plank will be discussing her bracing and intimate short story collection, Home Is a Made-Up Place. This event is free and open to the public. Registration is required in advance.
This event will include a public signing and time for audience Q&A. Sustain our author series by purchasing a copy of the featured book!
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Home is a Made-Up Place invites readers into the lives of people grappling with emotional injuries and confronting the past to become who they wish to be. Set in NYC, the PNW, New England, the Southwest, and rural Alaska, a single mother fights to protect her son, a daughter tries to forget her missing mother, a couple struggles to keep a marriage together and their children safe, and a family must face the truth about their father.
Bracing and intimate, Home is a Made-Up Place is a collection of stories about fighting for personal power, recognizing the difference between what can and cannot be changed, and the pull of familial attachments despite the toll they might take. Home is a Made-Up Place was named winner of Hidden River Arts' 2020 Eludia Award for short fiction. Stories in this collection earned awards, honors, and special mentions in journals including The Iowa Review, Hunger Mountain, Narrative, Third Coast, and American Literary Review.
"Home is a Made-Up Place expertly plumbs the complicated and surprising depths of motherhood and daughterhood while introducing characters who thrill and linger. A tender and exacting debut from an exciting new voice."
—Marie-Helene Bertino, author of Parakeet
"Stories that traverse the fraught territories between old conflicts and new starts, old patterns and uncomfortable realizations. Peopled by characters who are as complex and compromised as your own family, this is a lucid and compassionate collection by a writer to watch."
—Cate Kennedy, author of Like a House on Fire
"Plank's stories are capacious and evocative, filled with the human dynamics that often are not found in popular discourse. The settings are characters unto themselves and the characters are multi-layered, relatable, and fully realized within the pages of this collection. . .The characters in this collection are the ones you typically only hear about when someone asks, in hushed tones: 'did you hear about. . .?' Once you read, you'll be able to say, yes, you have."
—Jennifer Fliss, author of The Predatory Animal Ball
"All of the stories feature complex people in pain who feel quite real, and readers who have grappled with dysfunctional family situations in their own lives will certainly find them relatable. Every reader will be able to connect with the feelings of loneliness, betrayal, anxiety, and hostility that recur throughout these works. . . A poignant and melancholy collection of stories about the constant search for a place to belong."
—Kirkus Reviews
Ronit Plank is a Seattle-based writer, teacher, and editor whose work has been featured in The Atlantic, The Washington Post, The New York Times, Writer’s Digest, The Rumpus, American Literary Review, Hippocampus, The Iowa Review, and elsewhere. Her memoir When She Comes Back about the loss of her mother to the guru Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh and their eventual reconciliation was named a 2021 Best True Crime Book by Book Riot and was a Finalist in the National Indie Excellence Awards, the Housatonic Book Awards, and the Book of the Year Awards. Her fiction and creative nonfiction have been nominated for Pushcart Prizes, the Best of the Net, and the Best Microfiction Anthology, and her short story collection Home Is a Made-Up Place won Hidden River Arts' Eludia Award. Her weekly podcast Let’s Talk Memoir features interviews with memoirists about craft, the creative process, and the writing life and is available on Apple, Spotify, and at ronitplank.com.
Want a signed edition of the featured book, but can't make it to the event? Order through our website or over the phone, and write your request for a signature or personalization in the comments field at checkout. Please call the hosting store if you're placing your order within 24 hours of the event.
Third Place Books Events Code of Conduct: Third Place Books is committed to ensuring the safety and well-being of event attendees and guest authors, during both online and in-store events. By registering for this event, you are agreeing to refrain from engaging in inappropriate behavior and harassment of any kind throughout the course of this event (i.e. racial slurs, profanity, hate speech, spam comments, etc.). Please note that any participants who engage in inappropriate behavior or harassment of any kind will be immediately ejected from the event.
For media inquiries, access inquiries, or questions about our Covid-19 policies, please email events@thirdplacebooks.com or call our Lake Forest Park store at (206) 366-3311.
