Writer Antonya Nelson, who reads at today’s Poison Pen Reading Series, lets her characters take the lead. “I might create characters whose actions I don’t understand,” she explains. “[The] process of writing and inventing is to make that person’s actions make sense.” In her new book Nothing Right, Nelson fills the pages with characters that, fittingly and ungrammatically speaking, can’t get nothing right. “It seems like the nature of the beast — of storytelling in general — is about trouble,” says Nelson. “So, it’s not unique to me, for sure.” Nelson has written six collections of fiction and three novels, received a National Endowment for the Arts grant in 2000 and was named by The New Yorker as one of the “twenty young fiction writers for the new millennium.” Rus Bradburd and Kathleen Lee also appear at today’s reading. 8:30 p.m. Poison Girl, 1641 Westheimer. For information, call 713-537-9929 or visit www.myspace.com/poisongirlbar. Free.
Thu., March 26, 8:30 p.m., 2009
