Zach Powers: First Cosmic Velocity with Rob Spillman

It’s 1964 in the USSR, and unbeknownst even to Premier Khrushchev himself, the Soviet space program is a sham. Well, half a sham. While the program has successfully launched five capsules into space, the Chief Designer and his team have never successfully brought one back to earth. To disguise this, they’ve used twins. But in a nation built on secrets and propaganda, the biggest lie of all is about to unravel.

Because there are no more twins left.

Combining history and fiction, the real and the mystical, First Cosmic Velocity is the story of Leonid, the last of the twins. Taken in 1950 from a life of poverty in Ukraine to the training grounds in Russia, the Leonids were given one name and one identity, but divergent fates. Now one Leonid has launched to certain death (or so one might think…), and the other is sent on a press tour under the watchful eye of Ignatius, the government agent who knows too much but gives away little. And while Leonid battles his increasing doubts about their deceitful project, the Chief Designer must scramble to perfect a working spacecraft, especially when Khrushchev nominates his high-strung, squirrel-like dog for the first canine mission.

Zach Powers is the author of Gravity Changes, which won the BOA Short Fiction Prize, and his work has appeared in such places as American Short Fiction, Black Warrior Review, The Conium Review, and the Tin House blog. He co-founded the literary arts nonprofit Seersucker Live and led the writers’ workshop at the Flannery O’Connor Childhood Home for eight years. He spent a decade in television, for which he won four regional Emmy Awards, and he was a columnist for the Savannah Morning News. He is Director of Communications for The Writer’s Center in Bethesda, MD, and lives in Arlington, VA.

Rob Spillman is Editor and co-founder of Tin House magazine and the Executive Editor of Tin House Books. He is the 2017 recipient of the CLMP Energizer Award for Exceptional Acts of Literary Citizenship, the 2015 PEN/Nora Magid Award for Editing as well as the 2015 VIDO Award from VIDA. He is also His writing has appeared in BookForum, the Boston Review, Connoisseur, Details, GQ, Guernica, Nerve, the New York Times Book Review, Rolling Stone, Salon, Spin, Sports Illustrated, Time, Vanity Fair, Vogue, among other magazines, newspapers, and essay collections. He is currently a lecturer at Columbia University. His memoir, All Tomorrow’s Parties, was published by Grove Press in 2016.

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When: Mon., Aug. 19, 2019 at 7:30 pm - 8:30 pm
Where: Books Are Magic
225 Smith St.
718-246-2665
Price: Free
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It’s 1964 in the USSR, and unbeknownst even to Premier Khrushchev himself, the Soviet space program is a sham. Well, half a sham. While the program has successfully launched five capsules into space, the Chief Designer and his team have never successfully brought one back to earth. To disguise this, they’ve used twins. But in a nation built on secrets and propaganda, the biggest lie of all is about to unravel.

Because there are no more twins left.

Combining history and fiction, the real and the mystical, First Cosmic Velocity is the story of Leonid, the last of the twins. Taken in 1950 from a life of poverty in Ukraine to the training grounds in Russia, the Leonids were given one name and one identity, but divergent fates. Now one Leonid has launched to certain death (or so one might think…), and the other is sent on a press tour under the watchful eye of Ignatius, the government agent who knows too much but gives away little. And while Leonid battles his increasing doubts about their deceitful project, the Chief Designer must scramble to perfect a working spacecraft, especially when Khrushchev nominates his high-strung, squirrel-like dog for the first canine mission.

Zach Powers is the author of Gravity Changes, which won the BOA Short Fiction Prize, and his work has appeared in such places as American Short Fiction, Black Warrior Review, The Conium Review, and the Tin House blog. He co-founded the literary arts nonprofit Seersucker Live and led the writers’ workshop at the Flannery O’Connor Childhood Home for eight years. He spent a decade in television, for which he won four regional Emmy Awards, and he was a columnist for the Savannah Morning News. He is Director of Communications for The Writer’s Center in Bethesda, MD, and lives in Arlington, VA.

Rob Spillman is Editor and co-founder of Tin House magazine and the Executive Editor of Tin House Books. He is the 2017 recipient of the CLMP Energizer Award for Exceptional Acts of Literary Citizenship, the 2015 PEN/Nora Magid Award for Editing as well as the 2015 VIDO Award from VIDA. He is also His writing has appeared in BookForum, the Boston Review, Connoisseur, Details, GQ, Guernica, Nerve, the New York Times Book Review, Rolling Stone, Salon, Spin, Sports Illustrated, Time, Vanity Fair, Vogue, among other magazines, newspapers, and essay collections. He is currently a lecturer at Columbia University. His memoir, All Tomorrow’s Parties, was published by Grove Press in 2016.

This event is free!

Buy tickets/get more info now