A couple of interesting events coming up at ACWLP in the next couple of weeks. Sarah Vowell will read from Assassination Vacation on Feb. 8, Julian Barnes will read from Arthur and George–”a tale about low crime and high spirituality, guilt and innocence, identity, nationality and race, in which two men’s lives become interwoven and each becomes the other’s salvation”–on Feb. 10, and local author Brenda Webster will read from her latest, The Beheading Game, on Feb. 13.

“Who would have thought that Gawain and the Green Knight could lend itself to such a brilliant–and thoroughly contemporary–retelling? In Webster’s astute, comic narrative, Gawain is a gay theater director in love with a young man whose CEO father cannot tolerate his son’s homosexuality. In this complex triangle, where love does battle with fear, betrayal, humiliation and rage, tragedy seems inevitable. How Webster avoids such a conclusion, deftly re-writing the Gawain story in the process, is a marvel of novelistic art and human understanding.”–Madelon Sprengnether, author of Crying at the Movies: A Film Memoir