7 p.m., Thursday, Nov. 8, 2012
Grace Street Theater
934 West Grace Street, Richmond, VA

Justin Torres, winner of the 2012 VCU Cabell First Novelist Award, will read from We the Animals. After his reading, Torres will discuss the journey of his novel from its original idea to the published book. A book sale, signing, and reception will follow.

About the Book

We the Animals, which tells the story of the tumultuous childhood of three brothers, has received critical acclaim. Christopher Isherwood of The New York Times writes that the novel relates “an affecting story of love, loss and the irreversible trauma that a single event can bring to a family.” In his Esquire review, author Benjamin Percy proclaims, “Torres’s sentences are gymnastic, leaping and twirling, but never fancy for the sake of fancy, always justified by the ferocity and heartbreak and hunger and slap-happy euphoria of these three boys.” The book was chosen for the VCU Cabell First Novelist Award by a panel of three prominent judges in the literary world: David Gordon, winner of the 2011 VCU Cabell First Novelist Award for The Serialist; Maya Payne Smart, writer and chair of James River Writers; and bestselling author Tama Janowitz.

About the Winner

Justin Torres grew up in upstate New York. His work has appeared in The New Yorker, Granta, Tin House, Glimmer Train, and other publications. A graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, he is a recipient of the Rolón United States Artist Fellowship in Literature, and is now a Wallace Stegner Fellow at Stanford. He has worked as a farmhand, a dog-walker, a creative writing teacher, and a bookseller.