The Pat Conroy Literary Center’s monthly Open Mic Night will be presented as a virtual event, live-streamed to our Facebook page, on Thursday, May 8, from 6:00 to 7:30 p.m. Our featured presenter is fiction writer James Alan Gill, author of the story collection Not Dark Yet. Open Mic will also feature short readings of 3 to 5 minutes each by other writers in many genres.
When: Thursday, May 8, 2025 at 6 PM – 7:30 PM EDT
Price: Free · Duration: 1 hr 30 min
Where: Virtual – Facebook
Interested in reading as part of Open Mic? Let us know at contact@patconroyliterarycenter.org
We want to build our community of writers and an appreciation for the art and talent of new, emerging, and long-time writers. Thank you for supporting this partnership!
About our author:
James Alan Gill was raised in a town with no stoplights by a family of coal miners, then attended Southern Illinois University at Carbondale where he earned degrees in History and Creative Writing.
His work has appeared in numerous publications, including Colorado Review, Crab Orchard Review, The Common, Sou’wester, The Laurel Review, Midwestern Gothic, Fried Chicken and Coffee, Atticus Review, Book of Matches, and Prime Number Magazine. He has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and is a seven-time winner of the JD Supra Reader’s Choice Award for his writing in the legal technology industry. He currently lives with his wife, Brittany, in Minneapolis.
“Not Dark Yet unfurls like a fantastic roll of film capturing the hidden pockets of wonder in the lives of the denizens of James Alan Gill’s Illinois town of Matin. People fall in and out of love, race cars, make friends, make tracks, as ordinary lives reveal the extraordinary, all the while wrestling with the fundamental question, Can you really live the life you want and still please the people who love you?”—Whitney Otto, New York Times Bestselling Author of How to Make an American Quilt and Eight Girls Taking Pictures.
“Gill writes, with grace and humor and pain, about small-town life. This evocative chronicle of plain lives in crisis belongs on the same shelf as the stories of Bobbie Ann Mason and Raymond Carver. Poignant and powerful.”—Benjamin Percy, author of The Ninth Metal, Red Moon, and Thrill Me.
