Stories Books in Echo Park 1716 West Sunset Boulevard will host the first New England Review reading in California on Friday, September 26, 7:30 p.m.

Fiction writers Steve De Jarnatt, Sands Hall, and Lou Mathews, and poet, essayist Charles Hood will read from their work published in the current and past issues of the magazine.

Steve De Jarnatt (NER 34.1) grew up in the small logging town of Longview, Washington across the Columbia River from where Raymond Carver was born. He recently “broke out” of show biz after a long career writing and directing film and television, (the cult feature Miracle Mile is among his many credits), and he received his MFA from Antioch Los Angeles and is now pursuing the lucrative world of short fiction. Steve’s work has appeared in many journals, and one of his stories was among the 100 Distinguished Stories for Best American Short Stories 2013.

Sands Hall, whose story appears in the current issue, is the author of the novel, Catching Heaven (Ballantine) a Willa Award Finalist for Best Contemporary Fiction and a Random House Reader’s Circle selection; and of a book of writing essays and exercises, Tools of the Writers Craft.  She holds an MFA in Fiction from the Iowa Writers Workshop, and a second MFA in Theatre Arts. As a graduate of San Francisco’s American Conservatory Theatre’s Advanced Training Program, Sands has worked extensively as actor and director. A singer/songwriter, Sands recently produced a CD of her tunes, Rustler’s Moon. She teaches creative writing at Franklin & Marshall College in Lancaster, PA,

Charles Hood recently published a piece in NER Digital. He is an essayist, poet, and photographer and a Research Fellow at the Center for Art + Environment, Nevada Museum of Art. He teaches English at Antelope Valley College. A graduate of U.C. Irvine, he studied under Charles Wright, Louise Glück, and James McMichael. His awards include a Fulbright in Ethnopoetics, an NEH, an Artist-in-Residency with the Annenberg Community Beach House in Santa Monica, an Artist-in-Residency with the Center for Land Use Interpretation, and a National Science Foundation Fellowship to Antarctica. His most recent book, South x South, won the Hollis Summers prize from Ohio University Press. He is finishing three manuscripts, including a poetry book about all 150 moons in the Solar System.

Lou Mathews, who also has a story in the current issue, is a Los Angeles based journalist, fiction writer, playwright and a fourth-generation Angeleno. Married at 19, he worked his way through U.C. Santa Cruz as a gas station attendant and mechanic and continued to work as a mechanic until he was 39. His first novel, L.A. Breakdown, about illegal street racing, was picked by the Los Angeles Times as a Best Book of 1999. He has received a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in Fiction, a California Arts Council Fiction Fellowship, a Pushcart Prize and a Katherine Anne Porter Prize. His novella, The Irish Sextet, won Failbetter’s Tenth Anniversary novella contest. His story in the current New England Review “Some Animals Are More Equal Than Others” is from a new manuscript Hollywoodski. He has taught in the UCLA Extension Writers’ Program since 1989. He was also a contributing editor and restaurant reviewer for L.A. Style Magazine for seven years and 43 pounds.