Bear Pond Books
Award-winning poet Elena Georgiou celebrates the launch of her book of short
stories, The Immigrant's Refrigerator, with a reading, book signing & talk
with Laurie Stavrand, Community Partnership Coordinator at Vermont Refugee
Resettlement Program (VRRP).
Elena and Laurie will discuss immigration and how it affects one's story of
oneself.
10% of the book sales from this event will be donated to VRRP, which helps
refugees begin new lives in Vermont.
Free and open to the public. Proud to be a Vermont Arts 2018 event, part of
the Vermont Arts Council.
About the author
Elena Georgiou is the author of the short-story collection The Immigrant’s
Refrigerator (GenPop Books, 2018), and the poetry collections Rhapsody of the
Naked Immigrants (Harbor Mountain Press) and mercy mercy me (University of
Wisconsin), which won a Lambda Literary Award and was a finalist for the
Publishing Triangle Award. She is also co-editor (with Michael Lassell) of
the poetry anthology, The World In Us (St. Martin’s Press).
Georgiou has won an Astraea Emerging Writers Award, a New York Foundation of
the Arts Fellowship, and was a fellow at the Virginia Center for the Creative
Arts. Her work appears in journals such as BOMB, Cream City Review, Denver
Quarterly, Gargoyle, Lumina, MiPoesia, and Spoon River Review. She is an
editor at Tarpaulin Sky Press and the Director of the MFA in Creative Writing
program at Goddard College.
Georgiou is originally from London, England, where she spent the first
twenty-seven years of her life. Since then, she has lived in the US —
first in New York, now in Vermont.
About Laurie Stavrand
Laurie Stavrand has been the Community Partnership Coordinator for USCRI/VRRP
for nine years. During that time Laurie has had the privilege to help
resettle refugees in Vermont whose home countries are Bhutan, Burma, Burundi,
Cuba, Democratic Republic of Congo, Eritrea, Iraq, Rwanda, Somalia, Sudan and
Syria. She has expanded programs at USCRI/VRRP including the Crossroads Youth
Mentorship Program in partnership with Play in the Wild! and the Mosaic of
Flavors Cooking Class in partnership with City Market. Laurie has expanded
public outreach and education including the Destination BTV annual fundraiser
shows at the Burlington Airport and the refugee simulation ‘The Refugee
Journey’ board game. She is grateful for the opportunity to work with and
get to know so many amazing people.
About the book
Fiction. Short Stories. GenPop Books, 2018
If luck is on an author’s side, a book reaches its audience at the right
time. Elena Georgiou’s The Immigrant’s Refrigerator can confidently make
this claim. Populated with a cast of characters that shine the light on what
it means to be an outsider in the early part of the 21st century, this story
collection takes its reader into the private lives of those who have entered
a country legally, others who were forced to enter illegally, and the rest
who call a country home as a result of birth; characters searching for what
they need to sustain them on their journeys towards a future that will not
only be a place of refuge, but also one of hope.
"Elena Georgiou is a dazzlingly good writer. The thirteen stories in The
Immigrant’s Refrigerator are stirring, wise, and keenly alert to the
longings and contradictions that impel their beguiling characters. I loved
this collection."
—John McManus, author of Fox Tooth Heart and Bitter Milk
"Although immigrants aren’t the sole characters in Georgiou’s collection,
they are the thread that binds its 12 quiet, yet powerful stories. Many are
fleeing violence, like the Irish writer in the title story who’s running
from the war that tore apart his family, or the Somali man living in Maine
after years spent in a refugee camp. But some are just trying to fulfill the
promise of a better life, like the Bolivian woman forced to work as a
cleaning woman and a stripper to provide for her child. Georgiou uses
repetitive imagery to tie the stories together along with themes of
displacement and loneliness. What elevates this collection is that it is just
as often the American characters in their own homeland who experience these
feelings as they’re searching for the elusive thing called home or, more
likely, simple human connection. It is this mutual longing that shows
characters’ shared humanity and the compassion and kindness that can help
overcome differences. Georgiou’s timely collection will appeal to any
reader interested in immigration issues."
—Booklist
Event date:
Tuesday, April 24, 2018 - 7:00pm
Event address:
Bear Pond Books
77 Main St
Montpelier, VT 05602
http://www.bearpondbooks.com/event/elena-georgiou-book-launch-immigrants-refrigerator
United States