Shelby Raebeck will read from his recently published collection of short stories, LOUSE POINT: STORIES FROM THE EAST END, and talk a bit about the tension in the stories between holding on and letting go. Each of the stories to be read contain a pair of adult siblings living on or hailing from the East End, all bonded by their shared sense of an ideal past but divided by the inevitable reality that comes between them.

Relevant to our discussion after the readings will be an exploration of the fiction-writing process and then the existential questions of change as experienced by those of us on the East End.

"The seaside, working class hamlets of Raebeck's LOUSE POINT are inhabited by half-broken people-the lost and alone, ballplayers and fishermen, the separated and grieving-all who share the modest dream of becoming the heroes of their own lives. Not many succeed, but none of them stop trying. If you didn't know this was fiction you would assume Raebeck was writing about the real-life people he knows and he just painted them faithfully to their natural selves without a trace of sentimentality or likelihood of epiphany. There's sleight-of-hand here, too: by the book's end the assortment of characters has quietly accumulated to illuminate the unique American landscape they share, the east end of Long Island."

Producer: Shelby Raebeck

Shelby Raebeck grew up in Amagansett. He has an M.A. and Ph.D. in Creative Writing and has published fiction in a variety of magazines and anthologies, including Mid-American Review, Calalloo, Hawaii Review, The Southwestern Review, and Sudden Flash Youth. After teaching university and high school in various locations around the country, he returned in 2000 to the east end to teach, coach, write, and raise his two children.