Please join Debutiful for a Happy Hour Reading during Winter Institute!
All booksellers and book industry members attending the conference are cordially invited to a happy hour where Bedlam will provide discounted drinks to those attending. Door prizes will be available to the first 25 attendees.
Happy hour will take place from 3-5:00 pm on Tuesday, February 25 at Bedlam Public House. Debut writers Nini Berndt, Aaron John Curtis, Rob Franklin, Daria Lavelle, Ruben Reyes Jr, and Mariah Rigg will read for their forthcoming debut books.
You can register for free below.
The Debutiful Happy Hour Reading is not affiliated with Winter Institute.
About the Authors
Nini Berndt is a graduate of the MFA program in Fiction at the University of Florida. She teaches at Lighthouse Writers Workshop in Denver, where she lives with her wife and son. There Are Reasons For This is her debut novel.
Aaron John Curtis is an enrolled member of the Saint Regis Mohawk Tribe, which he’ll tell you is the white name for the American side of Akwesasne. Aaron has judged for the Center for Fiction’s First Novel Prize, the Southern Independent Booksellers Alliance prizes, the 2019 Kirkus Prize for Nonfiction, and the 2021 National Book Award for Nonfiction. Since 2004, Aaron has been Quartermaster at Books & Books, Miami’s largest independent bookstore. He lives in Miami. Old School Indian is his debut novel.
Rob Franklin was born and raised in Atlanta and is a writer of fiction and poetry, and a cofounder of Art for Black Lives. A Kimbilio Fiction Fellow and finalist for the New England Review Emerging Writer Award, he has published work in New England Review, Prairie Schooner, and The Rumpus among others. Franklin lives in Brooklyn, New York, and teaches writing at the School of Visual Arts. Great Black Hope is his debut novel.
Daria Lavelle is an American fiction writer. Born in Kyiv, Ukraine, and raised in the New York metro area, her work explores themes of identity and belonging through magic and the uncanny. Her short stories have appeared in The Deadlands, Dread Machine, and elsewhere, and she holds degrees in writing from Princeton University and Sarah Lawrence College. She lives in New Jersey with her husband, children, and goldendoodle, all of whom love a great meal almost as much as she does. Aftertaste is her debut novel.
Ruben Reyes Jr. is the son of two Salvadoran immigrants and the author of the short story collection There Is a Rio Grande in Heaven, which was a Debutiful Best Debut Book of 2024. A graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and Harvard College, his writing has appeared in The Boston Globe, The Washington Post, Lightspeed Magazine, and other publications. Originally from Southern California, he now lives in Brooklyn. Archive of Unknown Universes is his debut novel.
Mariah Rigg is a Samoan-Haole settler who was born and raised on the island of O’ahu. Her work has been featured in Oxford American, The Sewanee Review, Joyland, and elsewhere. In 2024, she was awarded a fellowship in creative writing from the National Endowment for the Arts. She holds an MFA from the University of Oregon and is currently a PhD candidate at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. Extinction Capital of the World is her debut short story collection.