Brian Bedard and a Litter of Corpses

In celebration of his new collection of short stories, Grieving on the Run, USD professor Brian Bedard conducted a reading of two stories yesterday in Vermillion that JB and I were able to attend. Brian is a great practiced reader for events like this, and he makes good selections, ones mixed with humor and pathos, his work always textured with odd moments of human experiences, including the humane kidnapping of a parrot and the sudden appearance of a woman carrying a world-class catfish into a nursing home. We joked with him that corpses seem to litter many of his tales, which makes dialogue easier to handle, I suspect. It's a good-looking collection of stories, and since he read the first at the event, the third one looked short for a nightcap, and yet another corpse appeared in the first paragraph. But what good stuff.