Tickets are still available for this event at all seating levels and can be purchased beginning at 6pm at the Benaroya Hall Box Office with cash, check, or credit card.

 

Karen Russell's debut novel, Swamplandia! was on all the "best of 2011" lists and was a finalist for the (unawarded) 2012 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. The Miami native was already well-known in literary circles for her story collection, St. Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves (2006), which included "Ava Wrestles the Alligator" about young Ava Bigtrees. The themes in St. Lucy's--the pitfalls and wonders of childhood and the changeable mood of the Florida swamp--resurface in Swamplandia!, which continues the story of the Bigtrees, a family of alligator wrestlers. "This family...will neither succumb nor triumph, but survive in their scarred way, and will lodge in the memories of anyone lucky enough to read Swamplandia!"