In-person author events return to the Bennington Free Library, 101 Silver Street! Join us upstairs in the Rotary Room for an author talk with Erin Kate Ryan, whose debut novel, Quantum Girl Theory, is based on the real-life disappearance of Paula Jean Welden from Bennington College in 1946. The talk is co-sponsored by The Bennington Bookshop, which will provide copies for purchase. The library is wheelchair accessible.

Each chapter of Quantum Girl Theory imagines a life Paula Jean Welden may have lived after she left that room: in love with a woman in a Communist cell and running from her blackmailer in 1950s New York. A literary forger on the verge of discovery at the advent of the computer age. A disgraced showgirl returning home to her mother's deathbed. Is she a lobotomy victim, is she faking amnesia, is she already buried in the nearby woods?

Erin Kate Ryan's short fiction has appeared in VQR, The Normal School, Conjunctions, Glimmer Train, among other places. She's a McKnight Artist Fellow, a James Jones First Novel Fellow, a Pushcart nominee, and the recipient of grants and scholarships from institutions such as the MacDowell Colony, Bread Loaf, and Vermont Studio Center. She holds a JD from Boston University and an MFA from Bennington Writing Seminars, where she was an Alumni Fellow in Fiction. She lives in the Hudson Valley with her partner and found family.

For more information contact The Bennington Bookshop by calling 802-442-5059 or visiting benningtonbookshop.com.