Friday 24 April at 7:30PM, the Philadelphia Fantastic Authors and Editors Series hosts James Morrow reading from his novel Shambling Towards Hiroshima. The place is Moonstone Art Center, 110 S. 13th Street (second floor), Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (in Center City Philadelphia at the corner of 13th and Sansom Streets).
James Morrow has been writing fiction ever since, as a seven-year-old living in the Philadelphia suburbs, he dictated “The Story of the Dog Family” to his mother, who dutifully typed it up and bound the pages with yarn. This three-page, six-chapter fantasy is still in the author’s private archives.
Upon reaching adulthood, Morrow proceeded to write nine novels and enough short stories to fill two collections. He has won the World Fantasy Award twice, the Nebula Award twice, and the Grand Prix de l’Imaginaire once.
To date, Morrow’s most conspicuous literary effort is a postmodern historical epic called The Last Witchfinder, praised by the New York Times for fusing “storytelling, showmanship and provocative book-club bait… into one inventive feat.” It tells of Jennet Stearne, who makes it her life’s mission to bring down the 1604 Parliamentary Witchcraft Act. The author followed this novel with a thematic sequel, The Philosopher’s Apprentice, which NPR called “an ingenious riff on Frankenstein.” Tachyon Books has just published his stand-alone novella, Shambling Towards Hiroshima, set in 1945 and dramatizing the US Navy’s attempts to leverage a Japanese surrender via a biological weapon that strikingly anticipates Godzilla.
Philadelphia Fantastic presents a series of readings and informal discussions by and with local and regional writers of speculative fiction on the fourth Friday of the month. The events are free and dinner with the guest afterwards is at a local restaurant on a pay-as-you-go basis. Upcoming readers include Jeffrey Ford (22 May), Lawrence Schoen (26 June), and Catherine Asaro (24 July).

The New York Review of Science Fiction Readings at South Street Seaport Museum continue on 5 May, with the doors opening at 6:30PM for a 7 o’clock start at 12 Fulton Street, on the fourth floor, New York City. This month’s event is guest-curated by Rick Bowes, and features three authors from the Tabula Rasa writers’ group: Saladin Ahmed, Robert J. Howe, and Andrea Kail.
Saladin Ahmed was born in Detroit. His fiction is forthcoming in Orson Scott Card’s Intergalactic Medicine Show, Clockwork Phoenix 2, and Beneath Ceaseless Skies. His poems have appeared in journals including The Brooklyn Review and in anthologies such as Abandon Automobile: Detroit City Poetry and Inclined to Speak: An Anthology of Contemporary Arab American Poetry.
Andrea Kail is a native New Yorker and is a graduate of the Dramatic Writing Program at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts and of the Odyssey Writing Workshop. Her work has appeared in Fantasy Magazine and the Writers of the Future anthology and will appear in the forthcoming The Best of Fantasy Magazine Anthology.
Robert J. Howe has published short fiction in Salon.com; the magazines Analog, Electric Velocipede, Pandora, Pulphouse, Tales of the Unanticipated, and Weird Tales; the Russian science fiction magazine Esli (If); and the anthology Newer York, among other publications. He is the editor, with John Ordover, of the Wildside anthology Coney Island Wonder Stories.
Guest Curator Richard Bowes has written five novels, the most recent of which is the Nebula Award-nominated From the Files of the Time Rangers. His most recent short fiction collection, Streetcar Dreams and Other Midnight Fancies, was published in 2006. Recent and forthcoming stories appear in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Electric Velocipede, Clarkesworld, and Fantasy magazines, and in the anthologies The Del Rey Book of Science Fiction and Fantasy, Year’s Best Gay Stories 2008, Beastly Bride, Haunted Legends, Fantasy Best of the Year 2009, Naked City, and Lovecraft Unbound. Many of these stories are chapters in his novel in progress, Dust Devil on a Quiet Street. He has won the World Fantasy, Lambda, International Horror Guild, and Million Writers Awards.
The NYRSF Reading Series is held the first Tuesday of every month. Admission is free, but $5 donations are encouraged to offset costs and buy dinner for the readers. Following the readings, a nearby pub serves as the site of dinner/drinks/continuing conversation. Radio producer and talk show host Jim Freund is the series producer and executive curator. He also airs most of the readings on his WBAI FM radio program, Hour of the Wolf. Upcoming events include: Catherynne M. Valente and SJ Tucker on 2 June.

The next entry in the Fantastic Fiction at KGB reading series will be 20 May. Hosts Ellen Datlow and Matthew Kressel will present Naomi Novik and F. Brett Cox at the KGB Bar (85 E 4 St, New York, New York). The event starts, as always, at 7PM.
Naomi Novik is the author of the bestselling Temeraire series of novels, with Victory of Eagles just out in paperback. She has a story coming out in the anthology Naked City in 2010.
F. Brett Cox’s most recent fiction publication was “Mary of the New Dispensation” in Postscripts 13. Forthcoming stories in 2009 are “She Hears Music Up Above” in the original anthology Phantom (Prime Books) and “Nylon Seam” in the Interfictions 2 Online Annex.
As with the other events, dinner usually follows (in this case, at a nearby Chinese restaurant). And curator Ellen Datlow usually posts photos of the evenings on her Flickr account (pictures of the Cassandra Clare and Marie Rutkoski reading on 15 April are at this link). Upcoming Fantastic Fiction at KGB events include: Brian Francis Slattery and Mary Robinette Kowal on 17 June, and a Clarion West Special Event with Samuel R. Delany, Jack Womack, Cat Rambo, and Kris Dikeman on 15 July.