The Booksmith invites you to attend an evening of readings to celebrate Peter Mountford and the release of Detonator, alongside authors Jon Hickey and Vanessa Hua. Join us!

About the book

The characters in Mountford's Detonator are struggling to do better, to save their souls. These stories are deeply preoccupied with the consequences of human decisions—these often funny and sometimes painful stories highlight flawed but fascinating characters making flawed choices in the hopes of achieving grace, or at least growth.

“Whatever sort of surprise you're after—funny, devastating, sexy,

shocking, savage, tender, illuminating—Detonator will supply it..."

-Karen Russell, MacArthur Fellow and Pulitzer Finalist, author of

Swamplandia! and Vampires in the Lemon Grove

Even when the stories pivot on sex-induced brain aneurysms and recovery, or finding a connection in a country entering a civil war, the stories locate humor and vulnerability. What

Mountford's characters understand is that everyone dies, and finding the joy in life is how we make sense of the world.

“The stories in Detonator are hilarious, even when they are miserable.”

-Mary Gaitskill, author of Bad Behavior, Veronica, and The Mare

Detonator, at its core, explores humanity's casual darkness, and how we must all contend with wanting to be better than their worse inclinations. These award-winning stories have

been previously published in journals such as The Paris Review, Guernica, Missouri Review, and Boston Review.

They’re tales of how to be a person.

About the author

A novelist, short story writer, and essayist, in recent years Peter Mountford has also become a popular writing coach and instructor with clients all over the world. His former clients and students have published widely, and include two recent New York Times bestsellers.

Author of the novels A Young Man's Guide to Late Capitalism (2012 Washington State Book Award in fiction), and The Dismal Science (NYT editor’s choice). his next book, a collection of short stories called Detonator, will be out from Four Way Books in 2025. Peter’s short fiction has appeared in Paris Review, Guernica, Missouri Review (twice), Ploughshares, Southern Review, Zyzzyva, Conjunctions, and Boston Review, where he won second place in the 2007 contest judged by George Saunders. His personal essays have appeared in The Atlantic, New York Times (Modern Love column), The New York Times Magazine, The Sun, Granta, and elsewhere. He’s also contributed feature articles to the Guardian, Writers’ Digest (three times), and elsewhere.

A fellow of Yaddo and Bread Loaf, Peter's work has been awarded grants from The Elizabeth George Foundation, the city of Seattle, 4Culture, and others. In 2016, he received the Gar LaSalle Storyteller Award for a fiction writer in Washington State. Peter was the events curator at Hugo House, Seattle's writing center, from 2013 to 2018, and is currently on faculty at the low-residency MFA program at Sierra Nevada College. He regularly teaches online and in person through Hugo House and Creative Nonfiction, and is a popular writing coach and manuscript consultant with clients all over the world. To learn more about these services, click HERE.

Born and raised in Washington, DC., apart from three years in Sri Lanka in the early stages of the Sri Lankan Civil War, Peter earned an undergraduate degree in International Relations in 1999. Afterward, he spent two years in Ecuador as the token liberal at a right-wing think tank. He has two kids, and currently lives in Seattle.

Vanessa Hua is the author of Deceit and Other Possibilities (2016), winner of the Asian/Pacific American Award for Literature and a finalist for the California Book Award, as well as A River of Stars (2018) and Forbidden City (2022). She has received a Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers’ Award, a Steinbeck Fellowship in Creative Writing, Dr. Suzanne Ahn Award for Civil Rights and Social Justice reporting as well as honors from the Society of Professional Journalists, Asian American Journalists’ Association, and Best of the West. A columnist at the San Francisco Chronicle, she has written for the New York Times, Washington Post, and ZYZZYVA, among others, and has filed stories from China, Burma, South Korea, and elsewhere. She teaches at the Warren Wilson MFA Program for Writers, Sewanee Writers Conference, and elsewhere.

Jon Hickey earned his MFA at Cornell University and was a Stegner Fellow at Stanford University. He has received scholarships from the Bread Loaf Writers Conference and the Sewanee Writers Conference, and he is an enrolled member of the Lac du Flambeau Band of Lake Superior Chippewa Indians. His short fiction has appeared in Massachusetts Review, Gulf Coast Online, Virginia Quarterly Review, Meridian, and The Madison Review. Jon lives in San Francisco with his wife and two sons.

About the bookstore

The Booksmith is an independent bookstore located in the Haight Ashbury neighborhood of San Francisco since 1976.

Please note:

• Check-in for the event will begin at 6:45pm.
• Priced ticket holders will have seats held until 7pm. Arrivals after 7pm will be allowed admission, but seats are not guaranteed.
• General admission ticket holders will be offered seats at check-in on a first-come, first-served basis. May be standing room.
• Space at the door on the day of the event is usually available, but not guaranteed.
• ADA accessible. Bathrooms on site during event hours.
• Events typically end between 8:30 and 9pm.
• Questions? tickets@booksmith.com