We are excited to host two of our favorite writers, Katya Apekina and Jeff Jackson, in conversation at the 2020 North Carolina Book Festival!
Katya Apekina is the author of the novel The Deeper the Water the Uglier the Fish. She has had stories published in The Iowa Review, Santa Monica Review, West Branch, Joyland, PANK and elsewhere, and has appeared on the Notable List of Best American Nonrequired Reading 2013. She translated poetry and prose for Night Wraps the Sky: Writings by and about Mayakovsky (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2008), which was short-listed for the Best Translated Book Award. She co-wrote the screenplay for the feature film New Orleans, Mon Amour, starring Elisabeth Moss, which premiered at SXSW in 2008. Born in Moscow, she currently lives in Los Angeles.
Jeff Jackson is a novelist, playwright, visual artist, and songwriter. His second novel Destroy All Monsters was published by Farrar, Straus & Giroux in Fall 2018. It received advanced praise from Don DeLillo, Janet Fitch, Dana Spiotta, Ben Marcus, and Dennis Cooper. His novella Novi Sad was published as a limited edition art book and selected for “Best of 2016” lists in Vice, Lit Reactor, and Entropy. His first novel Mira Corpora, published in 2013, was a Finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and featured on numerous “Best of the Year” lists, including Slate, Salon, The New Statesman, and Flavorwire. His short fiction has appeared in Guernica, Vice, New York Tyrant, and The Collagist and been performed in New York and Los Angeles by New River Dramatists.
As a playwright, six of his plays have been produced by the Obie Award-winning Collapsable Giraffe company in New York City. Vine of the Dead: 11 Ritual Gestures debuted in 2016 at the Westbeth Arts Center. Dream of the Red Chamber: Performance for a Sleeping Audience, an adaptation of the epic Chinese novel, debuted in Times Square in 2014 to rave reviews. Botanica was selected by the New York Times as “one of 2012’s most galvanizing theater moments.”
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