The Misadventures of Anti-Heroes

A lonely spinster marries a ghost. A live-at-home son writes dispatches from his basement. A laid-off techie tries his hand at doctoring day laborers without a license. These are the tales of antiheroes, itinerant workers and gender refugees in Tania James, Rajesh Parameswaran, and Xu Xi’s newest short story collections. Xu Xi, “a pioneer English-language writer” (The New York Times), chronicles the gaffes of women who just can’t seem to hit their stride in Access: Thirteen Tales. Tania James’s sophomore album Aerogrammes tells the funny and cringe-inducing accounts of missed connections. It’s a great follow-up to her debut novel Atlas of Unknowns, described by Junot Díaz as “wise and hilarious.” Promising newcomer Rajesh Parameswaran deploys dark wit of Lennie Small-proportions in I Am an Executioner: Love Stories, in which infatuated tigers playfully maul zookeepers to death and everyone’s part of the secret police. Parameswaran’s stories “combine narrative brio, ringing ­voices and beguilingly looped plots,” remarks The New York Times. Join us for an evening of fleeting encounters, what-ifs, and missed connections as Xu Xi, Tania James, and Rajesh Parameswaran explore the universal yearning to be human--whether animal, lost traveler, or outsider.