(Not Your Usual) Beach Reading April 19, 2010

In his award-winning bestseller The World of Normal Boys, K.M. Soehnlein introduced readers to a memorable teenager named Robin MacKenzie, a child of the disco '70s. In the novel Robin and Ruby he revisits Robin, now 20, in the middle of the turbulent 1980s. Caught between dreams of being a stage actor and the nightmare of negotiating relationships in an era when sex and death are unavoidably linked, Robin is dumped by his boyfriend the same weekend his younger sister, Ruby, takes off from a house party on the Jersey Shore, for all intents and purposes disappearing.

Leaving her years as a Catholic good-girl behind Ruby has a chance encounter with Chris-a seductive, troubled boy from her past-that sends her into a long summer night.

"There are those weekends where everything changes," says Soehnlein. "Where you meet someone new, where you might have really great sex for the first time and you set off an adventure you can't believe you have the guts to undertake-they only happen a few times in your life-and sometimes no one knows that it's happening but you yourself. I wanted to write about that."

While beach reading is usually light, easy entertainment that fades away like last weekend's tan, Soehnlein wanted to take advantage of his current role as dramaturg for the new Shotgun Player's adapation of Chekov's The Seagull, A Seagull in the Hamptons and snag some of his favorite Bay Area authors to join him on the set. "These writers know that anything can happen when people wind up in the water, on vacation, baking in the sun, or even lost on the Jersey Shore."

The backdrop for the night is the play's set complete with ocean, sky, boardwalk, and lots of SAND.

Joining Soehnlein are

JOSHUA MOHR, author of the novels Some Things That Meant the World to Me

ELIZABETH ROSNER, author of two highly acclaimed bestselling novels, The Speed of Light and Blue Nude

CATHERINE SHARPE author of Ambition Towards Love

JAY BARMANN, fiction and blog writer

Official Website: http://www.shotgunplayers.org/ashbystage.htm