Portland (Oregon) Author, James R Gapinski, will be here to share their short story collection, The Museum of Future Mistakes, and sign copies!

Gruesome scenarios take a tender turn; beautiful moments become sources of derision. The Museum of Future Mistakes is packed with inventive narrative choices and sharp lyricism, upending expectations on every page.

In “Brother and Not-Brother,” the residents of an entire city transform into perfect copies of the narrator’s deceased brother. In “The Last Dinosaurs of Portland,” two anthropomorphic dinosaurs yearn for companionship and empathy while fighting for a meager existence. In “Three-Month Autopsy,” a character visits ex-lovers and returns Ziploc baggies full of their body parts. Through these and other fabulist and magical realist stories, James R. Gapinski considers our physical relationship with our own bodies, how we process love and loss, and the fragility of identity amid moments of personal crisis.

Publishers Weekly raves, “Those with an appetite for the weird will relish this.” Talia Lakshmi Kolluri, author of What We Fed To The Manticore, calls the book “A stunning and utterly original collection.”

James R. Gapinski (they/them) is the author of three chapbooks and the novella Edge of the Known Bus Line (winner of the Etchings Press Novella Prize, named to Kirkus Reviews' Best Books of 2018, and finalist for the 2019 Montaigne Medal). The Museum of Future Mistakes (winner of the BOA Short Fiction Prize) is their first full-length short story collection. James lives in Portland, Oregon with their wife and cats. Learn more about the author at https://jamesrgapinski.com