THE POSTMODERN NOVEL

2:15 pm - 3:15 pm
| Location of Session: Swartz Stage
Adult Sessions

Start of Signing: 3:30 PM
| Signing Location: Adult Signing Tent

My Schedule

About the Event

Postmodern novels challenge traditional narrative structures, whether through metafiction, fragmented narration, or structural experiments. National Book Award Finalist Brandon Hobson writes a novel within a novel with The Devil Is a Southpaw, which explores the friendship and rivalry between two gifted boys and the echoing traumas of incarceration. Alex Z. Salinas slowly unravels his titular character’s background by means of 101-word chapters in The Dream Life of Larry Rios. This panel will discuss writing social critiques in fiction and experimental composition.

About the Authors

Photo Credit: Connor Bock

Brandon Hobson

Brandon Hobson is the author of eight books, including the novel Where the Dead Sit Talking, which was a Finalist for the 2018 National Book Award for Fiction. He has won fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the Ucross Foundation. He teaches creative writing at New Mexico State University and at the Institute of American Indian Arts and is an enrolled citizen of the Cherokee Nation tribe of Oklahoma. His new novel is The Devil Is a Southpaw, which is longlisted for the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction.

Photo Credit: Dayna De Hoyos

Alex Z. Salinas

Alex Z. Salinas is the author of four volumes of poetry, most recently Hispanic Sonnets and Trash Poems. His book of stories, City Lights from the Upside Down, was included in the National Book Critics Circle’s Critical Notes. He lives in South Texas. The Dream Life of Larry Rios is his first novel.

Moderator

Adeena Reitberger

Adeena Reitberger is the editor and codirector of American Short Fiction. Her writing has appeared in Fence, Mississippi Review, Black Warrior Review, Cimarron Review, Nimrod International Journal, NANO Fiction, and other journals and has been listed as notable in the Best American series. Her editorial work has garnered attention and awards, such as the Whiting Literary Magazine Prize and Best American, O. Henry, and Pushcart Prize anthology inclusions, and was listed as finalists for the 2021 and 2020 Firecracker Awards and the 2021 and 2024 ASME National Magazine Award for Fiction.