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The Innovative Contemporary Fiction Reading Series Presents Andrew Ervin
The author reads from his debut novel, Burning Down George Orwell’s House
Monday, September 26, 2016
2:30 pm – 3:30 pm EDT/GMT-4
Campus Center, Weis Cinema
Photo (c) Angelia Bautista [The Innovative Contemporary Fiction Reading Series Presents Andrew Ervin] On Monday, September 26th, at 2:30 p.m., Andrew Ervin reads from Burning Down George Orwell’s House in Weis Cinema, Bertelsmann Campus Center. Introduced by Bradford Morrow and followed by a Q&A, the reading is free and open to the public; no tickets or reservations are required.

“Beyond being a vastly entertaining novel, cunningly observed and delicately flavored with the very finest Scotch whisky on the planet, Burning Down George Orwell’s House is a serious meditation on just how Orwellian our world has really become. Let Andrew Ervin help you imagine your way to a world beyond Big Brother.”
—Madison Smartt Bell

Burning Down George Orwell’s House is a sweet book full of delights. Since many of its best passages are rhapsodies on single malt whiskies, one is tempted to call it a wee bonny dram of a tale.”
—Christopher Buckley, New York Times Book Review

Contact: Micaela Morrissette, [email protected], 845-758-7054
http://andrewervin.com/

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In Print

Vol. 79
Onword
Fall 2022
Edited by Bradford Morrow

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March 29, 2023
He had understood marriage as a way for people to be close together by maximizing their respective, individual isolation. He suspected that people got married so that the mirror of blame and excuses could point away from their respective selves, a way of blindly dismissing their own accountability. Had they been alone, they would have been forced to face their own terrors and demons. They would, at least, have tried to tackle some of their weaknesses instead of directing the velocity of their failure toward their “seemingly” innocent spouse. Zeaz understood this on a fundamental level and so, in the Year of the Tiger, he prepared legal papers to divorce his white wife and faced what he feared the most: himself, a biracial man with intermittent epileptic episodes, who was less dominant than a leaf.
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To survive sadly is still. 
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The skin rolls the water off. That is what ash is, actually. 
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Hump day is a whale, freer than us even in capture, even in tallow. 
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We got a new name. Something made up. We managed to live. In that hole name.
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He’s been coming around a lot but I’ve only recently started calling the dog Jesus because if Jesus were to return, this is how he would do it. In this shape, in this form, in these times. I’m sure of it. My best and only friend, Holy Amy, who thinks of herself as a kind of very powerful and sexually budding nun, disagrees. She says Jesus would return in the form of a handsome kisser, not some ugly mutt. Someone with a beautiful face, so we would know it was him. I say he’s not ugly. She says I am “vexed,” “cursed,” and that I am doomed to repeat the mistakes of those before me, though I’m not sure whom she’s talking about. All I know is it’s true: he’s not ugly. The dog suit he wears isn’t even a dog suit.