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Supernatural: Quan Barry & Daniel H. Wilson

12:00pm – 1:00pm

Portland’5: Brunish Theatre

Quan Barry returns with her latest novel and ghost story, The Unveiling, where a group of people are stranded on a remote island. What happens when their secrets and inner demons start to show who they really are and how haunted people can be? New York Times bestselling author, Daniel H. Wilson’s newest thriller, Hole in the Sky, excites readers with what happens when an unknown extraterrestrial is heading straight for earth. Moderated by Mat Johnson (Invisible Things). 

About The Unveiling:

The Unveiling by Quan BarryStriker isn’t entirely sure she should be on this luxury Antarctic cruise. A Black film scout, her mission is to photograph potential locations for a big-budget movie about Ernest Shackleton’s doomed expedition. Along the way, she finds private if cautious amusement in the behavior of both the native wildlife and the group of wealthy, mostly white tourists who have chosen to spend Christmas on the Weddell Sea.

But when a kayaking excursion goes horribly wrong, Striker and a group of survivors become stranded on a remote island along the Antarctic Peninsula, a desolate setting complete with boiling geothermal vents and vicious birds. Soon the hostile environment will show each survivor their true face, and as the polar ice thaws in the unseasonable warmth, the group’s secrets, prejudices, and inner demons will also emerge, including revelations from Striker’s past that could irrevocably shatter her world.

With her signature lyricism and humor, Quan Barry offers neither comfort nor closure as she questions the limits of the human bonds that connect us to one another, affirming there are no such things as haunted places, only haunted people. Gripping, lucid, and imaginative, The Unveiling is an astonishing ghost story about the masks we wear and the truths we hide even from ourselves.

About Hole in the Sky:

On the Great Plains of Oklahoma—in the heart of the Cherokee Nation—a strange atmospheric disturbance is noticed by Jim Hardgray, a down-on-his-luck father trying to reconnect with his teenaged daughter, Tawny. At NASA’s headquarters in Houston, Texas, astrophysicist Dr. Mikayla Johnson observes an interaction with the Voyager 1 spacecraft and concludes that something enormous and unidentified is heading directly for Earth. And in an undisclosed bunker deep in the earth, an American threat forecaster known only as The Man Downstairs intercepts a cryptic communication and sends an urgent message to the president and highest-ranking military brass: “First contact imminent.”

Daniel H. Wilson’s Hole in the Sky is a riveting thriller in the most creative tradition of extraterrestrial fiction. Based on real science and Wilson’s unique background, first contact comes to life through a Native American lens, with adrenaline-charged, stunning results. Hole in the Sky is a propulsive read that asks probing questions about nonhuman intelligence, the Western mindset, and humans’ understanding of reality.

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