The Coffin Factory, “the magazine for people who love books” and one of Library Journal’s “Best Magazines of 2011“, presents a reading to celebrate the third issue with contributors:

• Chinelo Okapranta
• Sam Allingham
• Ali Hosseini (_The Lemon Grove_, forthcoming from Northwestern University Press)
• Lara Vapnyar (_Broccoli and Other Tales_)
• Justin Taylor

• and editors Laura Issacman and Randy Rosenthal.

Chinelo Okparanta was born in Port Harcourt, Nigeria. She received her BS from Penn State University, her MA from Rutgers University, and her MFA from the University of Iowa. Her works have appeared or are forthcoming in Granta, The Kenyon Review, The Iowa Review, Conjunctions, Subtropics, and elsewhere. She currently teaches at the University of Iowa, where she is the Provost Postgraduate Visiting Writer for Fiction.

Sam Allingham’s work has appeared in print in Epoch, American Short Fiction, and One Story, and on the web at Conjunctions, n+1, and the Millions. He is currently a University Fellow at Temple University.

Ali Hosseini is an Iranian-American living in the Boston area. His stories have appeared in Epoch, Fiction International, American Letters & Commentary, Puerto del Sol, and other publications. He has had a novel and two short story collections published in Iran; his short fiction has also appeared in Persian-language publications in the US (_Persian Book Review, Par Monthly_, and Iranian.com). His novel, The Lemon Grove, is forthcoming from Northwestern University Press (August 2012).

Justin Taylor is the author of the novel The Gospel of Anarchy and the story collection Everything Here is the Best Thing Ever. He lives in Brooklyn, NY and at justindtaylor.net.

Lara Vapnyar was born in Russia in 1971, and is the author of the short story collection, There are Jews in my House, and the novel Memoir of a Muse. Her work has been published in The New Yorker, and Harper’s. She currently lives in New York City.