Presented as part of CCA’s HearSay Reading Series
The writer ZZ Packer praises Angela Pneuman’s debut novel, Home Remedies, as “smart, brave, and unflinchingly honest. . . . Angela Pneuman is a writer of such flinty brilliance and such dead-on, deadpan humor it’s often hard to believe you’ve arrived at the end of a story until stunned by the last gesture or word.” Julie Orringer calls Pneuman “one of the most astonishingly talented young writers working today.”
Home Remedies weaves together short, stand-alone fictional stories, all sharing a thread of conservative Christian faith. The themes are often gritty: mental illness, cruelty, divorce, sexual exploration, and coping with death. In one, a 24-year-old woman is paid to collect money for charity outside department stores while sharing a twin bed (and neuroses) with her young niece. Another explores a young Christian teen’s obsessive fear of premarital sex and how that fear plays out in a camp meeting where her father is the evangelist.
Pneuman holds an MFA in writing from Indiana University, a PhD in writing from SUNY Albany, and the Stegner Fellowship in writing from Stanford University, where she also teaches. She lives in California’s Napa Valley.
CCA Oakland campus, 5212 Broadway, Nahl Hall
