We at Fourteen Hills couldn't be more excited about the upcoming Gina Berriault Award Ceremony, where this year's recipient Melanie Rae Thon will read from some of her latest work. Wednesday, May 2nd, 2012, at 7 p.m. in San Francisco State University's historic Poetry Center.

Thon's most recent release is the novel The Voice of the River (Fiction Collective 2, 2011). She is also the author of the novels, Sweet Hearts  (Washington Square Press, 1998), Meteors in August (Faber & Faber, 1992), and Iona Moon (Plume, 1995), as well as the short story collections In This Light: New and Selected Stories (Graywolf Press, 2011), First, Body (HOLT, HENRY * & CO , 1998)  and Girls in the Grass (Owl Books/Henry Holt , 1998).  

To get a taste of some of Thon’s writing insights, check out the following snippet from an interview with Aaron Cance at Fiction Writers Review:

"My own writing grows more spare, more elliptical all the time, closer, I hope, to the music of poetry. At seventeen weeks, the ears of the human fetus are open, ready to receive, exquisitely developed. We awaken in a waterworld, immersed in vibration and sound: the unceasing whoosh of blood through the uterine artery, our mother’s heart and breath, the surprising syncopation of our own miraculous heartbeat. We know the exaltation and pitch of voice: anger, fear, love, sorrow. Language to us is a polyphonic murmuration. We speak not only mind to mind, but body to body. Until each sentence sings, my work is unfinished. I read every line aloud—twenty, thirty, a hundred times—seeking not only sense, but tone and timbre and rhythm, hoping that through the fusion of meaning and music my words can touch anyone, fetus or mother."

Please RSVP through our Facebook Event page.

Be sure to check out the Fourteen Hills fall issue release of 19.1 for our exclusive interview with Ms. Thon!

Chance Kroll

Fiction Staff