Incoming: Iain Ellis & Daniel A. Hoyt reading at the Raven, August 15

Iain Ellis, of whom the Wayward Blog has spoken before, is doing a reading with Daniel A. Hoyt at The Raven Bookstore in Lawrence on August 15 at 7pm, as part of what they are calling “The 2009 Ad Libri Per Aspera Tour.”

A short biography of both, courtesy of Mr. Hoyt:

Iain Ellis and Daniel A. Hoyt met at The Replay Lounge in Lawrence, Kansas, in August of 2000. During the next four years, they shared many rounds at the Replay, hours and hours on the basketball court, and multitudes of conversations about popular culture. They both withstood hugs by Bob Pollard (on the same night!), and years later, they each settled down and wrote books. This summer, they will read from their books around Kansas. (The state of Iowa wanted no part of them.) Iain will play a few tunes, too, and after the reading, they might encourage people to go out for a few drinks.

Daniel A. Hoyt’s short story collection, Then We Saw the Flames, won the

2008 Juniper Prize for Fiction, and came out in May of this year from the University of Massachusetts Press. Iain Ellis’ Rebels Wit Attitude is one of my favorite books of rock history in recent years, and was released by Soft Skull Press in November of last year.

You can read Hoyt’s story, “AMAR,” which was originally published in The Kenyon Review online. You can also listen to an interview I conducted with Dr. Ellis on KJHK’s “As Heard From the Hill” last November.