Ben Silliman Reads from His Debut Novel

Showings

Kentucky Theatre Sat, Jun 28 11:00 AM

Description

ABOUT THE NOVEL

 

Kentucky native Ben Silliman's Exiting the Bluegrass Turnpike is a queer post-modern coming-of-age tale with a Southern Gothic checklist of dysfunctional characters and topics. Set in the early 1980s, Silliman captures the culture of the early Reagan era. It is as if Silliman's cultural narrative references The Official Preppy Handbook and accurately describes not just the fashion but the WASP attitudes of the age, offering the reader insight into old money Kentucky. Silliman's prose is structured like a memoir with vocabulary choices bordering on a Racine tragedy. His protagonist lacks many typical characteristics associated with the traditional hero, but by no means would you call Silliman's champion an antihero. Exiting the Bluegrass Turnpike has all the mood of The Bell Jar, is chockfull with an erotic Capote-styled doomed romance, and many apparitions of Southern Gothic stock characters any reader of the genre will recognize and enjoy.

 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

 

Born and raised in Lexington, Kentucky, Benjamin Rue Silliman is a graduate of Henry Clay High School, Ole Miss, NYU, Columbia, and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He is the author of several scholarly articles, winning the Max Block Award for his (and his co-author's) article on tax implications for same-sex married couples in the CPA Journal in 2015. Benjamin is a CPA, an accounting professor, and department chair at St. John’s University in the Tobin College of Business. He is also a Kentucky Colonel. Benjamin is married to his husband Frank, and they reside in Manhattan. Exiting the Bluegrass Turnpike is his debut novel.