Mark D. Baumgartner in conversation with Matt McBride discussing and signing Last Chance for a Slow Dance

About this event

Please join us for Mark D. Baumgartner in conversation with Matt McBride discussing and signing Last Chance for a Slow Dance!

Last Chance for a Slow Dance is a mesmerizing collection of eleven tales that capture the pivotal choices we make at the edge of who we are and what we might become. From a woman dreaming about plane wrecks during an unexpected visit from her ex to a surreal tale of a marriage proposal gone horribly wrong, these stories are set in the "Far Middle" of America, in suburbs and mid-sized towns, reflecting the working-middle-class ethos. These stories are dark yet strangely joyous, celebrating the weirdness of old America at the edge of whatever comes next.

Mark D. Baumgartner is a fiction writer who lives in East Tennessee with his wife and kids. His writing has been published widely in literary journals, including The Southern Review, Confrontation, Best of Ohio Anthology, Bellingham Review, Silk Road, Yemassee, Brilliant Corners, Wisconsin Review, Phoebe, and Tampa Review, among others. His fiction is featured on a recent episode of the Rock is Lit podcast, as a winner of the 2024 Bill Hallberg Prize in Short Fiction. His story, “The Great Siwash Shoe War,” won the 2014 Fugue Prize in Short Fiction. His writing has twice been nominated for inclusion in the Pushcart Prize Anthology. He has worked in various editorial capacities at Mid-American Review, River Styx and Witness. For twelve years he was editor of Aethlon: The Journal of Sport Literature. He has earned a PhD from University of Nevada-Las Vegas, where he was a Schaeffer/Black Mountain Fellow in Creative Writing, and an MFA degree from Bowling Green State University. He teaches Creative Writing and American Literature at East Tennessee State University.

Matt McBride is the author of two full-length collections, City of Incandescent Light (Black Lawrence, 2018) and At the Mercy of the Flies (Half Mystic, 2026) as well as four chapbooks. His most recent, Prerecorded Weather, co-written with Noah Falck, is available from Survision Books. He is the winner of the James Tate Prize, the St. Lawrence Book Award, and the Ohio Chapbook Award. He is the recipient of an Ohio Arts Council grant, an Elliston Poetry Fellowship, and a Writers in the Heartland residency. Currently, he lives in Chambersburg, PA, where he teaches composition, literature, and creative writing for Wilson College. He can be found online at www.mattmcbridepoetry.com.

From Joseph-Beth Booksellers