Please join us in welcoming to Twenty Stories author Alexandra Chang, reading from her debut short story collection Tomb Sweeping! She will be joined in conversation by local novelist and short story author Rebekah Bergman, followed by an audience Q&A. This event is free and open to all!
ABOUT TOMB SWEEPING
A playful and deeply affective short story collection about the histories, technologies, and generational divides that shape our relationships—from the award-winning writer of Days of Distraction
Compelling and perceptive, Tomb Sweeping probes the loyalties we hold: to relatives, to strangers, and to ourselves. In stories set across the US and Asia, Alexandra Chang immerses us in the lives of immigrant families, grocery store employees, expecting parents, and guileless lab assistants.
A woman known only to her neighbors as "the Asian recycling lady" collects bottles from the streets she calls home. A young college grad ponders the void left from a broken friendship. An unfulfilled housewife in Shanghai finds a secret outlet for her ambitions in an undercover gambling den. Two strangers become something more through the bond of mistaken identity.
These characters, adeptly attuned to the mystery of living, invite us to consider whether it is possible for anyone to entirely do right by another. Tomb Sweeping brims with remarkable skill and talent in every story, keeping a definitive pulse on loss, community, and what it means to feel fully alive. With her debut story collection, Chang further establishes herself as "a writer to watch" (New York Times Book Review).
ABOUT ALEXANDRA CHANG
Alexandra Chang is the author of Days of Distraction and Tomb Sweeping. She is a National Book Foundation 5 Under 35 honoree. Her writing has appeared in Zoetrope: All-Story, The New York Times, Harper’s Bazaar, Guernica, and elsewhere. She currently lives in Ventura County, California with her husband, and their dog and cats.
ABOUT REBEKAH BERGMAN
Rebekah Bergman is a writer living in Rhode Island. Her debut novel The Museum of Human History (Tin House, 2023) was named one of Wired Magazine’s best books of summer and received starred reviews from Kirkus, Booklist, and Shelf Awareness. Her short stories have been published in Tin House Online, Joyland, and other journals. She is at work on a second book, for which she has received support from the Rhode Island State Council on the Arts.