Tomorrow, Thursday, March 19, at 4 pm, Andrea Cohen (Furs Not Mine, forthcoming from Four Way Books this spring) will read with Danielle Jones-Pruett at the Writers House at Merrimack College in North Andover, MA.

Also tomorrow, Thursday, March 19, at 4 pm, Rachel Eliza Griffiths (Lighting the Shadow, forthcoming from Four Way Books this spring) will be reading at the Furious Flower Poetry Center at James Madison University in Harrisonburg, VA.

Tomorrow, Thursday, March 19, at 7:30 pm, Cammy Thomas (Inscriptions, available from fourwaybooks.com) will read with Bill Mayer at Moe’s Books (2476 Telegraph Avenue) in Berkeley, CA.

Tomorrow, Thursday, March 19, at 8 pm, Patrick Lawler (The Meaning of If: Stories, available from fourwaybooks.com) will read at Elizabethtown College in Elizabethtown, PA.

"Wickedly amusing, insightful, the stories reach into our souls with questions about the meaning of living now and perhaps later, our being in word and action reminiscent of Kurt Vonnegut...." says Kyle St. Claire in his review of Patrick Lawler's The Meaning of If in the June 5, 2014 edition of the Bucks County Herald on page A11. 

The Meaning of If is available from Four Way Books. 

Patrick Lawler lives in Syracuse, NY. He is also the author of five collections of poetry. His novel Rescuers of Skydivers Search Among the Clouds is the winner of the Ronald Sukenick American Book Review Innovative Fiction Prize—Fiction Collective 2 (University of Alabama Press, 2012). He is the recipient of numerous awards and fellowships including a National Endowment for the Arts, two New York State Foundation for the Arts grants, and a Saltonstall Artist’s grant. At SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry, he teaches Literature of Nature and Environmental Writing courses, and at LeMoyne College he is Writer in Residence where, besides poetry and fiction, he teaches scriptwriting and playwriting.

The Meaning of If: Stories is available from Four Way Books. 

“You just have to admire all the possibilities,” says one character in Patrick Lawler’s short story collection, The Meaning of If—a sentence that encapsulates the myriad of “if’s” explored in these pages. At times surreal and yet so realistic, we hear each “muffled whisper,” we see each “muddy photograph,” we know each “secret life,” as if it were our own. These are familial stories of transition and transformation—both mental and physical—that consider the question “What if?”

Praise for The Meaning of If: Stories

"Patrick Lawler is a word magician--he waves a wand and the ordinary glows and vibrates. Up his sleeve you'll find Borges and Kafka. From his top hat he pulls out Nabokov and Marquez. But the Lawler show is completely his own: prepare to be dazzled as this master storyteller conjures up pain, joy, awe, and yearning so intensely, they feel like new experiences. With their unique poetic inventiveness, the stories of Patrick Lawler's The Meaning of If announce a new force in American short fiction."

- David Lloyd

"Patrick Lawler's great gift as a storyteller is his utterly convincing vision of the absurd. With magician's glee, these stories expose the vanities of small town America and the pathos of family life. The Meaning of If is a wild carnival ride; look, listen, and prepare to be exhilarated."

- Megan Staffel