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Kate Gale and Helen Benedict at Skylight Books!
May 9 @ 7:00 pm - 8:00 pm PDT
In The Good Deed, Helen Benedict offers a stark, powerful portrait of women on opposite sides of a refugee camp in Greece: the refugees trapped inside, and the troubled American tourist whose good intentions morph into a dangerous delusion, resulting in a poignant, layered novel on displacement and belonging, love and betrayal, and the jagged space between altruism and egoism.
Helen Benedict, a professor at Columbia University, is the author of seven previous novels, six books of nonfiction, and a play. Her newest novel, The Good Deed, hailed by Kirkus, Publishers Weekly and Booklist, comes out of the research she conducted for her 2022 nonfiction book, Map of Hope and Sorrow, which earned PEN’s Jean Stein Grant for Literary Oral History in 2021. Benedict’s previous novel, Wolf Season, received a starred review in Library Journal, which wrote, “In a book that deserves the widest attention, Benedict ‘follows the war home,’ engaging readers with an insightful story right up until the gut-wrenching conclusion.” Benedict’s 2011 novel, Sand Queen, was named a “Best Contemporary War Novel” by Publishers Weekly. A recipient of the Ida B. Wells Award for Bravery in Journalism, and the James Aronson Award for Social Justice Journalism, she is also the author of The Lonely Soldier: The Private War of Women Serving in Iraq. Her writings inspired a class action suit against the Pentagon on behalf of those sexually assaulted in the military and the 2012 Oscar-nominated documentary, The Invisible War. Her nonfiction books on sexual assault have been translated into Czech and Hungarian, where they were the first books on the subject ever to be published in those countries. Her books have been translated into seven languages.
Under a Neon Sun
For people living in houses and apartments, with stay-at-home jobs, the pandemic was inconvenient. For Mia–a student and housekeeper whose budget is so tight she lives in her car–the pandemic destroys the very source of her paltry income. Fortunately, gutsy and funny Mia is a determined survivor. After weeks of cutting her limited spending even further, missing meals along the way, her wealthy employers become desperate for her services again. This time, she’s determined not to let them take advantage of her as they have in the past. Her newfound confidence gives her new hope as she works to escape the shackles of poverty on her own terms. Sally Rooney meets Elizabeth Strout in this brilliant fiction debut.
Kate Gale is the co-founder and managing editor of Red Hen Press, which has been publishing for more than thirty years in Los Angeles. She is also the author of seven books of poetry including The Goldilocks Zone and The Loneliest Girl, as well as several librettos including Rio de Sangre with Don Davis—who wrote the music to the Matrix movies. Kate grew up in an intentional community. From those beginnings, she has put herself through school, ultimately receiving a Ph.D. in English literature from Claremont Graduate University. Since 1989, she has taught writing at universities in Los Angeles every semester, and has also taught publishing at Oxford, Columbia University, Harvard University, and USC. She served as president of PEN USA from 2005–2006. Currently, Kate teaches publishing and poetry at Chapman University and lives in Los Angeles.