Join us for an evening at Bird in Hand to celebrate Julia Ridley Smith's witty, poignant new collection of short stories, Sex Romp Gone Wrong! We hosted Julia for her gorgeous memoir The Sum of Trifles, back in 2022 and are so pleased that she returns in this new genre, joined in conversation by Katie Moulton, author of Dead Dad Club.
In her debut story collection, Julia Ridley Smith navigates the currents and eddies of desire, sex, love, and relationships. Smith's stories will beguile and delight readers while at the same time exploring the deep and often difficult ties of family, marriage, and romantic love in modern life.
Sex Romp Gone Wrong is Julia Ridley Smith’s first story collection. Her first book, The Sum of Trifles, is a memoir published by the University of Georgia Press (2021) as a title in their Crux literary nonfiction series. Julia’s short stories and essays have appeared in the Alaska Quarterly Review, American Literary Review, Arts and Letters, the Carolina Quarterly, Chelsea, Ecotone, Electric Literature, the Greensboro Review, the New England Review, Southern Cultures, and The Southern Review, among other places. Julia teaches creative writing at UNC Chapel Hill.
Katie Moulton is the author of Dead Dad Club: On Grief & Tom Petty, published by Audible in 2022. Her essays and writing appear in New England Review, Salon, Oxford American, The Believer, and received special mentions by Best American Essays and Pushcart. Her work has been supported by fellowships from MacDowell, Bread Loaf, the Mid-Atlantic Arts Foundation, and other organizations. She lives in Baltimore and teaches in the Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins University.