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Short Story Spotlight: An Afternoon with Mahreen Sohail

A Find Your Story author talk.

Join the Library and PEN/Faulkner for a conversation with the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction winner Mahreen Sohail to discuss her collection of short stories Small Scale Sinners. In conversation with Gwydion Suilebahn, Mahreen will discuss the new book and share tips for writing a collection of short stories. 

Copies of the book will be available for sale and signing following the talk.

Location: First Floor New Books Area.

About the book and author:

A scintillating debut story collection examining a fundamental question: What does it mean to be good? In twelve kaleidoscopic stories, Mahreen Sohail shifts our perspective on this question from moment to moment. Two girls observe a group of child soldiers and one reflects: “My sister and I were only small scale sinners.” A chorus of sixth graders unravels a school year they spend obsessed with their twin classmates. A girl cuts off her beautiful long hair for her boyfriend’s dying mother, but he immediately wishes she hadn’t. Alternate, parallel lives are considered. With startling observations and economy of language, Sohail dives ever deeper into the question, asking how—in the midst of grief or betrayal, against a backdrop of war, or even just workaday suffering—being good matters. Small Scale Sinners announces the arrival of an extraordinary talent.

Mahreen Sohail was born in Islamabad, Pakistan. She has an MFA from Sarah Lawrence College, where she studied as a Fulbright Scholar, and was a Writing Fellow at A Public Space and a Charles Pick Fellow at the University of East Anglia. Her work has appeared in Granta, The Kenyon Review, Pushcart Prize XLII, and elsewhere. She lives in Washington, DC.

Moderator Gwydion Suilebhan is a writer, arts and technology innovator, and arts advocate. A founding member of The Welders—a Helen Hayes Award-winning playwrights collective in Washington, DC—Suilebhan previously held the position of Director of Brand and Marketing for Woolly Mammoth, and he has worked as a brand and technology consultant for a variety of large arts and culture organizations, including Ford’s Theatre, the Drama League, and the Playwrights Center, among many others. Earlier phases of his career included extensive work in publishing, education, and journalism. Suilebhan also serves as Project Director of the New Play Exchange for the National New Play Network.

See the full Find Your Story schedule here.

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