Kristen Gleason in conversation with Sabrina Orah Mark – The Wallet and Other Thefts
Sunday, Sep 13, 2026 4:30 PM
Location:
A Cappella Books
208 Haralson Avenue, NE
Atlanta, Georgia 30307
Winner of the BOMB Fiction Prize and White Review Short Story Prize, Kristen Gleason’s debut is a collection of precise, surreal, and lightly linked short fiction, concerned with theft, shame, exile, masochism, and God.
A Cappella Books is pleased to welcome Gleason for an in-store talk and signing in honor of her new collection, “The Wallet and Other Thefts.” She will appear in conversation with award-winning author Sabrina Orah Mark.
This event is free and open to the public; copies of the book will be available for purchase.
About the Book
Closely observed and slyly destabilizing, “The Wallet and Other Thefts” is a book of short fiction shimmering with mystery and menace. This surreal, precise collection unfolds in a world beyond conventional time and space. Concerned with theft, shame, exile, tourism, masochism, God, and “Nature,” these stories are lightly linked—objects, diseases, and landscapes reappear. Gleason’s elliptical prose refuses traditional narrative logic, resisting easy resolution. Reminiscent of the work of Anna Kavan, Jane Bowles, and Marie NDiaye, “The Wallet and Other Thefts” is a work of slipstream fiction that pulses with a sense of something generously withheld.
About the Author
Kristen Gleason is a fiction writer whose short stories have appeared in BOMB, A Public Space, McSweeney’s, The White Review, The Los Angeles Review of Books, and elsewhere. Her work has won a number of awards, including the BOMB Biannual Fiction Contest and The White Review Short Story Prize. She received a Writing Fellowship from A Public Space and was a fine arts Fulbright grantee in Tromsø, Norway. She lives in Athens, Georgia.
About the Conversation Partner
Sabrina Orah Mark is an award-winning writer and poet. Raised in Brooklyn, she earned her BA from Barnard College, an MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, and a PhD in English from the University of Georgia. She is the author of the poetry collections “Tsim Tsum” and “The Babies,” winner of the Saturnalia Book Prize, as well as the story collection “Wild Milk,” which won the Georgia Author of the Year Award for Short Story and was a finalist for the Townsend Prize for Fiction.
Mark’s honors include a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, a Sustainable Arts Foundation Award, a fellowship from the Fine Arts Work Center, a MacDowell fellowship, and a Creative Capital Award. She teaches nonfiction, fiction, and poetry for the Bennington Writing Seminars and lives in Athens, Georgia, with her husband, Reginald McKnight, and their two sons. “Happily,” her collection of essays on fairy tales and motherhood, which began as a monthly column in The Paris Review, recently won a National Jewish Book Award.
