Ismet Prcic kicks off the 2012 Manzanita Writers' Series season with a reading from his novel, Shards.
Ismet Prcic will read from his novel Shards at the Manzanita Writers’ Series at 7pm on Saturday, February 18, 2012 at the Hoffman Center in Manzanita. This event kicks of the 2012 series, now in its fourth year.
Also at the Saturday event, we’ll unveil the first edition of the new literary journal, the North Coast Squid, with selections from a variety of writers who have a connection to the local area.
Shards is a novel about a young Bosnian, also named Ismet Prcic, who has fled his war-torn homeland and is now struggling to reconcile his past with his present life in California.
It’s a harrowing war story, a stunningly original coming-of-age novel, and a heartbreaking saga of a splintered family. Shards has been listed as a New York Times Notable Book of the Year, a Chicago Sun-Times Best Book of the Year, an Oregonian Top 10 Northwest Book of the Year, and shortlisted for the Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association Book Award and the Flaherty-Dunnan First Novel Prize.
Prcic has gotten positive reviews for his first novel:
“Prcic captures the insanity of war and its unceasing aftermath.” – Publisher’s Weekly.
“Impressive . . . Inventive . . . Pushes against convention, logic, chronology . . . Ambitious and deep . . . [Prcic] succeeds at writing an unsettling and powerful novel.”—The New York Times Book Review
“Irresistible . . . Fierce, funny, and real.”—Chicago Sun-Times
Ismet Prcic (ISS-met PER-sick) or Izzy as he prefers, was born in Tuzla, Bosnia-Herzegovina, in 1977 and immigrated to America in 1996. He holds an MFA from the University of California, Irvine, and was the recipient of a 2010 NEA Award for fiction. He is also a 2011 Sundance Screenwriting Lab fellow. He lives in Portland, Oregon, with his wife.
Following Prcic’s reading and Q&A, we’ll have our popular Open Mic where up to nine local writers will read 5 minutes of their original work.
Admission for the evening is $7.
Hello,
My friend and I saw Izzy on the 18th and he was great and we so appreciate you having the Writers Series!!
We would like to submit to the ‘Squid.’ Could you please tell us how we do that and what the deadline is?
Thank you very much,
Kent and Teresa
Hood River and Cannon Beach
Thank you for coming to the event. We were happy to see such great turnout. Regarding the North Coast Squid: it’s an annual, and so the deadline will likely be November 30, 2012 for the February 2013 publication. Watch for blog posts and press releases sometime in October announcing when and where we’ll be accepting submissions. Meanwhile keep up the writing! v.