Acclaimed Award-Winning Author Benjamin Percy’s ‘Red Moon’ Book Tour Comes to Northfield

Acclaimed award-winning author Benjamin Percy, currently touring the globe in support of his latest buzzworthy release, “Red Moon,” will appear at 7:30 p.m. on Monday, May 20 at J. Grundy’s Rueb-N-Stein in Northfield. The event, which is free and open to the public, will feature a reading from “Red Moon” and reception with the author, as well as a performance by popular local band, The Counterfactuals. Copies of “Red Moon” will also be available for purchase at the event.

Percy’s website, www.benjaminpercy.com, offers this description of “Red Moon:”

“They live among us.
They are your neighbour, your mother, your lover.
They change.

Every teenage girl thinks she’s different. When government agents kick down Claire Forrester’s front door and murder her parents, Claire realizes just how different she is. Patrick Gamble was nothing special until the day he got on a plane and hours later stepped off it, the only passenger left alive, a hero. President Chase Williams has sworn to protect the people of the United States from the menace in their midst, but is becoming the very thing he has promised to destroy. So far the threat has been controlled by laws and violence and drugs. But the night of the red moon is coming, when an unrecognizable world will emerge, and the battle for humanity will begin.”

Bestselling author John Irving reports, “’Red Moon’ is a serious, politically symbolic novel – a literary novel about lycanthropes. If George Orwell had imagined a future where the werewolf population had grown to the degree that they were colonized and drugged, this terrifying novel might be it.”

“Red Moon” (Grand Central/Hachette, May 2013) has been named one of the most anticipated books of 2013 by Publishers Weekly. Amazon has selected the book as one of its “Top Ten Books” for May and “Red Moon” is also included in the Summer 2013 Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers Program. Entertainment Weekly gave the book an “A-“ and released a trailer for “Red Moon,” which can be viewed online at www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/benjamin-percy/red-moon/. Released only last week, the book has already garnered numerous favorable reviews around the world.

Percy has also published “The Wilding” (Graywolf Press, 2010), as well as two books of stories, “Refresh, Refresh” (Graywolf Press, 2007) and “The Language of Elk” (Carnegie Mellon University Press, 2006). His fiction and nonfiction have been read on National Public Radio, performed at Symphony Space, and published by Esquire (where he is a contributing editor), GQ, Time, Men's Journal, Outside, the Wall Street Journal, Tin House, Glimmer Train, Ploughshares, and the Paris Review.

Percy’s many honors include a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, a Whiting Writers' Award, the Plimpton Prize, two Pushcart Prizes, and inclusion in “Best American Short Stories” and “Best American Comics.” He is currently adapting “The Wilding” into a screenplay for filmmaker Guillermo Arriaga (Babel, 21 Grams) and completing a novel called “The Dead Lands” (forthcoming from Grand Central/Hachette in 2014).

Percy and his family recently relocated to Northfield, where he is the Writer-In-Residence at St. Olaf College.

The Counterfactuals, comprised of three Carleton College professors and one from St. Olaf College, were voted Northfield’s “Best Band” in 2010. They have been featured on 89.3 The Current’s “The Local Show” and on KYMN Radio. The very popular band plans to release their debut CD this year. “With their busy schedules, this is a rare chance to check out one of Northfield’s best bands,” notes Jessica Paxton, KYMN Radio DJ. Samples of their music can be found online at www.thecounterfactuals.bandcamp.com.

In addition to this event at the Upstairs Rueb, Percy has two upcoming appearances on KYMN Radio: Monday, May 13 at 4:30 p.m. on “All-Wheel Drive” and again on Monday, May 20 from 9 to 11 a.m. on “The Wayne Eddy Affair.” KYMN is broadcast at 1080 AM and streams online at www.kymnradio.net.

Copies of “Red Moon” are currently available at bookstores nationwide, including Northfield’s Monkey See Monkey Read Bookstore, 425 Division Street. For more information, call (507) 645-6700 or email info@monkeyread.com.

J. Grundy’s Rueb-N-Stein is located at 503 Division Street in Northfield. For more information, including disability accommodations, call (507) 645-6691.