Deep Vellum Books presents a very special event with Bill Cotter, author of the novels Fever Chart, The Parallel Apartments, and The Splendid Ticket, all published by McSweeney’s. He’ll be in conversation with Zac Crain, Deep Vellum author and senior editor at D Magazine. Q&A to follow!
About the Book
What happens when two fragmentary lives collide? Both usually meet with oblivion. But sometimes, a fusion, of sorts, results. On a cool night in the Texas Hill Country in 2004, moorless Angie Bigelow intersects with dissolute gambler Dean Lee Grandet, and somehow, through an alchemy of solitude and desperation, they combine into a sensational thing greater than the sum of its parts. But at a moment of peace and tranquility, a tragedy comes to pass, and the Grandet family accelerates toward disintegration. Nothing can save them. Can it? What about a two-hundred-million-dollar lottery ticket? Or is that mere slip of numbered paper in the watch pocket of Angie’s blue jeans just the beginning of the end, the real oblivion?
About the Presenters
Bill Cotter is the author of the novels Fever Chart, The Parallel Apartments, and, upcoming December 2022, The Splendid Ticket, all published by McSweeney’s. He is also responsible for the middle-grade adventure series Saint Philomene’s Infirmary for Magical Creatures, penned under the name W. Stone Cotter, and published by Macmillan. Cotter’s short fiction has appeared in The Paris Review, Electric Literature, and McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern. An essay, “The Gentleman’s Library,” was awarded a Pushcart Prize. Cotter lives in Austin with his wife, the sensational mezzo-soprano Kristine Olson. His books are for her. When he is not writing, Cotter labors in the antiquarian book trade.
Zac Crain is senior editor of D Magazine. He has written about the explosion in West, Texas; legendary country singer Charley Pride; Tony Dorsett's struggle with life after football; and imaginary meetings with a mosquito and a Pegasus. Crain is the author of A Pedestrian's Recent History of Dallas, published by Deep Vellum in 2020, as well as 2009's Black Tooth Grin: The High Life, Good Times, and Tragic End of "Dimebag" Darrell Abbott. He lives in Dallas.