Colm O’Shea and David Hollander

In O’Shea’s novel Claiming De Wayke, (written in an Irish slang vernacular that instantly roots in your head and stays there!) we see a dire vision of a near-future where Virtual Reality offers more fulfillment than real life. We follow the protagonist “Tayto,” a “saint,” or someone who stays hooked up their VR halo as much as possible, barely existing in the real world but conquering the universe in his VR. Tayto gets taken along on a wild journey through a dystopian underworld filled with shady characters, snake-oil salesmen, and false prophets as he seeks to find his long-lost genius brother.

In Hollander’s novel Anthropica, we follow protagonist Laszlow Katasztrófa as he assembles a team of equally-fed up intelligent weirdos to help enact his plan for an apocalypse. In his company are disgruntled professors, exhausted scientists, ultimate frisbee players, and even “a trio of vengeful, superintelligent robots locked in a hangar in South Korea, patiently waiting for some gullible human(s) to release them.”  As funny as it is dark, readers may find themselves surprised by the team they end up rooting for.

Both authors are writing instructors at major universities, and their personal relationship and rapport will make this a heady, humorous night to connect to and commiserate with your fellow human beings about the state of our planet.

Note: Copies for signing must be purchased at this event.

Claiming de Wayke

What would you do if someone offered you the keys to a limitless reality?

Tayto is a saint-someone addicted to their VR halo. He's uneducated, unmotivated, and loath to quit his habit and embrace the real world: the Wayke. When the mysterious Zeke Zohar contacts him, offering him a chance to be raptured into a VR paradise forever, it seems too good to be true. The catch: Zeke believes this chance hinges on them finding Tayto's genius brother, and his plan involves journeying to Tayto's childhood home, navigating the detested Wayke in the process.

For all the weirdness of the VR universe, it's the real world that Tayto finds truly strange. His journey forces him to confront a gang, a cult, and the two great questions that addicts often face: Is it possible to come home? Is it possible to escape from it?

Colm O’Shea

Colm O’Shea teaches essay writing at Tisch School of the Arts, NYU. His poetry has been anthologized in Voice Recognition: 21 Poets for the 21st Century (Bloodaxe), and Initiate: An Oxford Anthology of New Writing (Blackwell). His first novel, Claiming De Wayke, is available from Crossroad Press, and his book on sacred/morbid geometry in Finnegans Wake, James Joyce’s Mandala, is from Routledge. Visit him at colmoshea.com

ANTHROPICA

A Hungarian fatalist convinced that the human race is a blemish on God's otherwise perfect universe; a natural resource scientist who's discovered that we exhaust the earth's resources every eight days; an Ultimate Frisbee-playing man-child who's identified a fractal pattern embedded within all matter; a failing novelist desperate for the approval of those she despises; a paralyzed philosophy professor discovering that he can make things happen simply by wanting them badly enough; and a trio of vengeful, superintelligent robots locked in a hangar in South Korea, patiently waiting for some gullible human(s) to release them.

This is a partial cast of Anthropica, a novel that puts Laszlow Katasztrófa's beautiful vision of a universe without us to the test. Because even if Laszlow is merely, as he claims, an agent of fate, he's the one driving this crazy machine. And once he has his team assembled, he just might-against all odds and his own expectations-be able to see his apocalyptic plan to fruition.

David Hollander

David Hollander is the author of the novels Anthropica, a finalist for The Big Other Award for Fiction, and L.I.E., a finalist for the NYPL Young Lions Award. His short fiction and nonfiction have appeared in numerous print and online forums, including McSweeney’s, Fence, Conjunctions, The Rumpus, The New York Times Magazine, Poets & Writers, Lit Hub, and Unsaid. He has co-authored the book for a full-length musical, The Count, and his work has been adapted for film and frequently anthologized, notably in Best American Fantasy. He is currently at work on a screenplay, a musical, and a novel, none of which seem likely to come to fruition any time soon. He lives in Cold Spring with his wife and two children and is a member of the writing faculty at Sarah Lawrence College.