Visiting Authors – Andrew Farkas and Danilo John Thomas

Farkas is also the author of The Great Indoorsman: Essays , The Big Red Herring , Sunsphere , and Self-Titled Debut . He is an Associate Professor of Creative Writing at Washburn University and an editor for Always Crashing . ABOUT THE BOOKS: Ore Vein: Ore Vein , the debut short story collection by Danilo John Thomas , explores the thin spaces between hardship and heroism prevalent in small-town America.

Thomas captures what it feels like to come of age among the urban decay and cracked pastoral landscapes of Southwestern Montana and a fictionalized version of the town where he was raised. From the claustrophobia of crumbling mine shafts to the senseless consequences of bar brawls, these stories are at once mystical and all too real, violent yet deeply introspective, masculine but tender. Ore Vein , like the mines it showcases, digs deep in dark places after fortunes, showing what it means to hit the mother lode and, sometimes, what it means to lose it. (www.danilojohnthomas.com) Movies Are Fine for a Bright Boy Like You: In the short fiction collection Movies Are Fine for a Bright Boy Like You, Andrew Farkas explores the unseen lives of stock characters (security guards in “Watching the Night” and the two guys who carry a pane of glass across the street during chase sequences in “Mythos of the Glaziers”), examines cinematic conventions (absurd swashbuckling set pieces in “Conditional Vengeance” and the fact that pictures taking place in other countries are full of characters who speak English with bad accents in ” Foreign] Accents”), deconstructs film genres (the thriller in “A Suitcase of Money Out on the Edge of Town” and creature features in “Our Inner Kaiju”), while, along the way, lovingly making fun of almost everything having to do with movies (extras in “A Real Nobody” and purposefully schlocky B-grade horror films in “Continuity”).

So grab some snacks and get ready to yuck it up with the rest of the peanut gallery as Farkas celebrates the joyfully, wondrously synthetic history of the movies. Are You Now, or Have You Ever Been?: It has been said of Andrew Farkas’ stories that they “eff the ineffable.” In Are You Now, or Have You Ever Been? , Farkas continues effing away by plumbing the depths of identity, questioning how we define the self, and yanking the rug out from under our comfort zones.

Whether through an existentially terrifying brochure for a paradise island vacation, an insurance salesman who refuses to believe he’s actually Napoleon, a dead man who finds death superior to life, or an overcrowded bar that possibly signifies the end of the world, Farkas investigates in these stories that elusive idea of who we think we are . Follow a detective seeking someone confoundingly indescribable, a salvager befriending sentient warehouses, a motorist proving that you should never ask for directions, and the first person (or maybe three) to circumnavigate the globe in Farkas’ whirlwind of witticisms, bewildering entropy, and stifling indecision. Yeah, sure, the Oracle of Delphi may’ve said, “Know Thyself.”

But in Are You Now, or Have You Ever Been? , Farkas counters with: “Nice maxim. Now how’s about you show us how.” The Ancient Mysteries of Las Vegas: Throughout the course of The Ancient Mysteries of Las Vegas , we are asked to question whether the events of each act happened in some form at some time to the protagonists, Arty and Auggie, or if those events were dreams of a sort, or, by the third act, if those events are being used by Arty to cover up some deeply private shame and regret.

After all, in the first act, Arty and Auggie, two twentysomethings who appear to be trapped in an apartment, imagine a surreal road trip to Las Vegas. But are they dreaming, or are they actually on their way? In the second act, Arty and Auggie, two fortysomething gangsters on the lam in Las Vegas, hide out in a hotel room where they interact with an animatronic boss who keeps promising to bring them a job.

Fueled by paranoia thanks to the television, Auggie isn’t even certain when they became gangsters, or how. Instead, Auggie thinks there’s some kind of setup going on. Arty’s not so sure.

In the third act, Arty is a very old man, likely in an assisted living facility in Nevada, who thinks he’s in a play. Arty, somehow in his twenties again, is in the audience of the play. Except how could he be in the audience when we learn that he probably died when he and Arty went in search of a legendary place that does not exist (like Atlantis) called Las Vegas?

Dealing with memory, fantasy, conspiracist thinking, and friendship, Andrew Farkas ‘ debut play shows that what happens in Vegas may not stay in Vegas. And what happens when all that surreality bleeds out?