The Art of One-Sentence Storytelling: "SENTENCE" Book Launch

In his new collection Sentence, acclaimed writer Mikhail Iossel (Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction nominee, 2026) performs a remarkable juggling act between genres and countries. Each one-sentence story spins breathlessly through memory and imagination, where past and present coexist in a single, unbroken line of thought.

Born in Leningrad, USSR (now St. Petersburg, Russia), Iossel worked as an electromagnetic engineer and was a member of an underground samizdat literary organization before immigrating to the United States in 1986. His recent books include Love Like Water, Love Like Fire (winner of the 2021 QWF Paragraphe Hugh MacLennan Prize for Fiction) and Notes from Cyberground: Trumpland and My Old Soviet Feeling.

A frequent contributor to The New Yorker, his stories and essays have also appeared in The New York Times Magazine, Foreign Policy, and Best American Short Stories. Iossel is also the founding director of Summer Literary Seminars and an associate professor of English at Concordia University in Montreal.

Join us for a conversation and signing as we celebrate Sentence, a poignant collection that fuses linguistic freedom with emotional precision.