Summer Shorts is back. Every other Thursday at 6 PM, we gather in the courtyard to read a short story together: silently, all at once, with nowhere else to be. The story is unveiled when you arrive. No preparation required. Just show up, settle in, and let the rest of your week fall away.

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We're opening the series with Lucia Berlin, a writer who enjoyed almost no critical recognition while she was alive. Berlin was a working mother of four who held jobs as a nurse, a housemaid, and a switchboard operator, writing when she could. That instability may explain her affinity for the short form: she was always pressed for time. It also gave her everything she needed. Her stories are set in the places she actually lived (El Paso, Juneau, San Francisco, Santiago, Mexico City, New York) and populated by tough, smart women who self-destruct, love hard, and drink a little too much. When A Manual for Cleaning Women was published posthumously in 2015, the literary world finally caught up to what Berlin had been doing all along.

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Tonight's story comes from Evening in Paradise, her second major posthumous collection. We'll read it together, then talk about it. Happy hour pricing at the cafe. No RSVP required, but it always helps us plan.

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