Children of the New World Author to Visit WKCTC's PSAD October 24

Stories of Near-Future World of Life-Altering Technologies

Paducah, KY (10/18/2017) — Author Alexander Weinstein will read from his book Children of the New World at West Kentucky Community and Technical College's Paducah School of Art and Design Tuesday, October 24 at 7 p.m.

Children of the New World is a collection of stories that introduces readers to a near-future world of social media implants, memory manufacturers, dangerously immersive virtual reality games, and frighteningly intuitive robots ­that change the lives of the book's characters forever.

Weinstein's stories open the door to fascinating, and possibly terrifying, technologies that could be on the horizon. The main character in "The Cartographers" works for a company that creates and sells virtual memories, while struggling to maintain a real-world relationship sabotaged by an addiction to his own creations. In "Saying Goodbye to Yang," the robotic brother of an adopted Chinese child malfunctions, and only in his absence does the family realize how real a son he has become.

Children of the New World, published in 2016, was chosen as a best book of the year by NPR, Google and Electric Literature and as a Notable Book of the Year by The New York Times.

"In this haunting and prescient debut collection,...We feel the insidious reach of technology, corporate forces, and climate change tightening into a chokehold. Over 13 tales, he steeps us in a realm of alternate realities close to our own, but each with a thought-provoking twist," wrote The Boston Globe.

Weinstein is an Associate Professor of Creative Writing at Michigan's Siena Heights University and the Director of the Martha's Vineyard Institute of Creative Writing. He is the recipient of a Sustainable Arts Foundation Award, and his fiction has been rewarded the Lamar York, Gail Crump, Hamlin Garland, and New Millennium Prizes.

For more information, contact Britton Shurley, WKCTC dean of Humanities, Fine Arts, & Social Sciences and associate professor of English at britton.shurley@kctcs.edu or (270) 534-3243.

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West Kentucky Community and Technical College (WKCTC) has been recognized four consecutive times by The Aspen Institute as one of the top 10 community colleges in the nation for providing students with strong job training and continuing higher education opportunity, for achieving high completion and transfer rates, and for providing strong employment results for its graduates.

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