NextThreeDays: Event Display

Author Night with Kristina Gorcheva-Newberry
Venue: Blacksburg Books, Blacksburg
Directions: Google Map Link
Organizations: Kristina Gorcheva-Newberry
Date: Thursday, April 14, 2022
Time: 6:30 - 7:30 PM
Event Types: Speaking Engagements
Cost: Free

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Description:
Blacksburg Books presents an Author Night with Kristina Gorcheva-Newberry on Thursday, April 14, 2022.

Author Kristina Gorcheva-Newberry returns, this time to give a reading and discuss her new novel "The Orchard". Inspired by Anton Chekov’s "The Cherry Orchard", Kristina Gorcheva-Newberry’s "The Orchard" powerfully captures the lives of four Soviet teenagers who are about to lose their country and one another, and who struggle to survive, to save their friendship, to recover all that has been lost.

Coming of age in the USSR in the 1980s, best friends Anya and Milka try to envision a free and joyful future for themselves. They spend their summers at Anya’s dacha just outside of Moscow, lazing in the apple orchard, listening to Queen songs, and fantasizing about trips abroad and the lives of American teenagers. Meanwhile, Anya’s parents talk about World War II, the Blockade, and the hardships they have endured.

By the time Anya and Milka are fifteen, the Soviet Empire is on the verge of collapse. They pair up with classmates Trifonov and Lopatin, and the four friends share secrets and desires, argue about history and politics, and discuss forbidden books. But the world is changing, and the fleeting time they have together is cut short by a sudden tragedy.

Years later, Anya returns to Russia from America, where she has chosen a different kind of life, far from her family and childhood friends. When she meets Lopatin again, he is a smug businessman who wants to buy her parents’ dacha and cut down the apple orchard. Haunted by the ghosts of her youth, Anya comes to the stark realization that memory does not fade or disappear; rather, it moves us across time, connecting our past to our future, joys to sorrows.

Kristina Gorcheva-Newberry, winner of the 2021 Raz/Shumaker Prairie Schooner Book Prize in Fiction, is a Russian-Armerian emigre, who moved to the U.S. in 1995, after witnessing perestroika and the collapse of the Soviet Empire. She has published over 50 stories and received eight Pushcart nominations.

Kristina Gorcheva-Newberry was raised by a mother who believed that unless you read every day, you did not deserve dinner. Kristina graduated from Moscow State Linguistic University and worked as a school teacher and an interpreter before moving to the United States. She received an M.A. in English from Radford University and an M.F.A. in Creative Writing from Hollins University.

Kristina’s stories and essays appeared/are forthcoming in Zoetrope: All-Story, Joyland, Electric Literature, The Southern Review, Indiana Review, Epiphany, Gulf Coast, TriQuarterly, Flyway, Slice, Prairie Schooner, Nimrod, and elsewhere. Her fiction was selected as a finalist for multiple awards, including eight Pushcart nominations, the 2016 Dundee International Book Prize, the 2019 Prairie Schooner Book Prize, and the 2020 Indiana Review Fiction Prize. Kristina is the winner of the 2013 Katherine Anne Porter Prize for Fiction and the 2015 Tennessee Williams scholarship from the Sewanee Writers’ Conference.

Kristina’s first collection of stories, "WHAT ISN’T REMEMBERED", won the 2020 Raz/Shumaker Prairie Schooner Book Prize in Fiction and was published in the fall of 2021. Kristina’s debut novel, "THE ORCHARD", is forthcoming from Ballantine Books (a division of Penguin Random House) in the spring of 2022.

Link: https://www.kgnewberry.com/

For more information, visit: https://www.blacksburgbooks.com/events/author-night-with-joseph-hartmann or https://www.facebook.com/Blacksburg.Books or email info@blacksburgbooks.com or call 540-315-9650.