KGB Bar
85 East Fourth St. off Second Ave.
Wednesday, August 21, free, 7:00
www.kgbbar.com
KGB Bar’s latest Fantastic Fiction lineup should be a mutual lovefest, as Michael L. Printz Award winner Libba Bray (Going Bovine, Beauty Queens) teams up with rising YA star Nova Ren Suma (Imaginary Girls) for an evening of readings and discussion hosted by Ellen Datlow and Matthew Kressel. Here’s what Bray, who is a YA goddess — from her popular books to her band, Tiger Beat, which features fellow YA authors Natalie Standiford, Barnabas Miller, and Daniel Ehrenhaft, to her potentially lucrative Tampon Poetry™ — has to say about Suma’s latest novel, 17 & Gone: “Elegant, riveting, powerful, and poignant, this suspenseful, supernatural tale slips under the skin, inking out a haunting tapestry of menace and madness. Nova Ren Suma is, quite simply, a masterful storyteller and one of my favorite writers.” Suma is one of our favorite writers as well, and not only because we used to work with her and that she gave her first public reading of Imaginary Girls at twi-ny’s tenth anniversary party. She is also an expert craftsperson who agonizes over every word of the complex, fascinating worlds she creates, filled with wholly believable characters trapped in extraordinary situations. Here’s a tiny taste, from the first chapter of 17 & Gone (Dutton, March 2013, $17.99): “Abby Sinclair. There at the intersection. I’m not saying she was there in the flesh with her thumb out and her hair wild in the wind and her bare knees purpled from cold — it didn’t start out that way. The first time I saw Abby, it was only a picture: the class photograph reproduced on her Missing poster.” We know that makes us want to read a whole lot more, and it should do the same to you. Suma’s next book, The Walls Around Us, is due out from Algonquin in 2015.