Anthony Koranda in conversation with Rachel Swearingen"Broken Bottles"

Anthony Koranda and Rachel Swearingen will be in store at The Book Cellar to celebrate the release of his new book Broken Bottles!

About the Book:

After growing up with an alcoholic mother and an intermittent stepfather, Alex pines for connection, even as he sabotages his life with substances, and substitutes one failed relationship for the next. Shuffling from troubled home to chaotic institution, he narrates his strange search through Chicago’s gritty gutters and lonely lakefront spaces with a voice that is clear, honest—and unforgettable. Anthony Koranda’s debut Broken Bottles is earning comparisons to Denis Johnson and Nelson Algren. It’s a searing debut destined for a space among the classics of Chicago literature—a story both strange and familiar about one person’s path through the chaos of youth, in a quest for acceptance and hope.

About the Author:

Anthony Koranda is a writer and educator who lives in Chicago with his wife and dog. He received a Master of Fine Arts from Columbia College Chicago. His fiction and interviews have appeared in Allium, A Journal of Poetry and Prose, Sobotka Literary Magazine, Cowboy Jamboree, Hair Trigger, Arkansan Review, Potato Soup Journal, The Magnolia Review, Barren Magazine, and Into the Void Magazine, among others. Find him online at www.anthonykoranda.com.

About the Conversation Partner: 

Rachel Swearingen’s stories and essays have appeared in VICE, The Missouri Review, Kenyon Review, Off Assignment, Agni, American Short Fiction, and others. Her debut story collection, How to Walk on Water was the winner of the 2018 New American Fiction Prize. She is the recipient of the 2015 Missouri Review Jeffrey E. Smith Editors’ Prize in Fiction, a 2012 Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers’ Award and the 2011 Mississippi Review Prize in Fiction. In 2019, she was named one of “30 Writers to Watch” by the Guild Literary Complex. She holds a BA from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and a PhD from Western Michigan University. She currently teaches at the School of the Art Institute in Chicago.