An Evening with Arthur Bradford

Longtime friends of SPACE will recall a memorable evening back in 2002 when Zadie Smith read from her novel White Teeth, and a young writer named Arthur Bradford began the evening strumming the guitar and sharing stories from his collection Dogwalker.

Now, almost 13 years later, Bradford’s new strangely funny collectionTurtleface and Beyond features prosthetically limbed lovers, a snakebitten hitchhiker turned wedding crasher, a lawyer at the end of his rope, a ménage à trois at Thailand’s Resort Tik Tok, and a whole host of near disasters, narrow escapes, and complicated victories, all narrated by Georgie, who struggles with his poor decisions but finds redemption in the telling of each of his tales. Big-hearted and hilariously high-fueled, Turtleface and Beyond marks the return of a beloved and unforgettable voice in fiction.

Arthur Bradford is an O. Henry Award-winning writer and Emmy-nominated filmmaker. His writing has appeared in Esquire, McSweeny’s, VICE, and Men’s Journal. He lives in Portland, Oregon, and serves as the co-director of Camp Jabberwocky, the nation’s longest-running residential summer camp for people with disabilities.

Presented with the Maine Writers and Publishers Alliance and Longfellow Books.