Hollins Faculty, Josh Barkan, reads from his new story collection "Mexico"

Josh Barkan will read from his highly praised new short story collection, Mexico. The NY Times, Huffington Post, Washington Independent Review of Books, etc. rave for the book. Kirkus, (starred review), says, “Masterful stories that peel away at the thin border between everyday life and profane violence in modern-day Mexico.” Library Journal (starred review) writes, “Barkan turns in a near-perfect collection that's addictive, delicious, and confounding in its knife-edge ride through the hard lives of its characters.”

Barkan won the Lightship International Short Story Prize and has been a finalist for the Grace Paley Prize for Short Fiction, the Paterson Fiction Prize, and the Juniper Prize for Fiction. He is the recipient of a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. His writing has appeared in Esquire. With his wife, a painter from Mexico, he divides his time between Mexico City and Roanoke, Virginia, where he teaches at the Jackson Center for Creative Writing at Hollins.