Acclaimed fiction writer to read from her short story collection

Acclaimed fiction writer Laura van den Berg will read selections from her new short story collection, “The Isle of Youth,” at 6 p.m. Thursday, Jan. 30 in the Ochre Court state dining room.

Van den Berg’s book, a National Public Radio “Best Book of 2013” selection, explores the lives of women mired in secrecy and deception. From a newlywed caught in an inscrutable marriage to private eyes working a baffling case in South Florida to a teenager who assists her magician mother and steals from the audience, the characters in these bewitching stories are at once vulnerable and dangerous, bighearted and ruthless, and they will do what it takes to survive.

Van den Berg was raised in Florida and earned her M.F.A. at Emerson College. Her first collection of stories, “What the World Will Look Like When All the Water Leaves Us,” was a Barnes & Noble “Discover Great New Writers” selection, longlisted for The Story Prize and shortlisted for the Frank O’Connor International Award.

Her visit to Salve Regina is being sponsored by the Office of Academic Affairs together with the Department of English and the Department of Sociology and Anthropology.