I’ll be reading tonight at the Original Short Story evening event for Litquake, at Varnish Fine Art Gallery. The theme is “the lesser evil.” I’ll be reading with Gary Amdahl, Tamim Ansary, Tom Barbash, Terry Bisson, and Judy Budnitz (author of the wonderful story collection Nice Big American Baby). 7 p.m.

Plus, in litworld news: Doris Lessing has received the Nobel Prize in Literature. According to Time Magazine:

By choosing Doris Lessing in 2007 the Academy has scored a triple: she was born in Iran, known then Persia, in 1919; raised in Zimbabwe, known then Rhodesia; and lives in the U.K. In its citation, the academy called her “that epicist of the female experience, who with scepticism, fire and visionary power has subjected a divided civilisation to scrutiny.”

Harold Bloom decried the selection of Lessing over other contenders like Haruki Murakami, Amos Oz, and Philip Roth as “pure political correctness.”