Carol Roh Spaulding won the Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction from University of Georgia Press in 2023 for her collection, Waiting For Mr. Kim and Other Stories. Her novel, Helen Button, won the Eludia Prize from Hidden River Arts and is forthcoming November 19th from Sowilo Press. She teaches at Drake University and lives with her husband outside of Des Moines, Ia.
Larry Lew will read “White Fate,” by Carol Spaulding. Larry is happy to be returning to Stories on Stage Davis. Since the 1990’s, Larry has worked with a number of community theaters in the Sacramento area, including The Old Eagle Theater with Laura Lothian; Stockton’s Asian Pacific Theater Company with Dennis Yep and Val Acoba; Signag Tala with Sonny Alforque; Auburn’s Motherload Stage Company with Stuart S.W. Smith, and Celebration Arts with James Wheatley. He has also performed at Stories on Stage Sacramento, reading Steph Cha’s “All Luck” — an excerpt from her L.A.-based story “South Central Noir.” Larry leads a jazz ensemble that performs for hire in the Sacramento region.
Nicole Simonsen is a writer and a high school English teacher from Northern California. Her work has appeared in Chicago Quarterly Review, Southern Humanities Review, Booth, and elsewhere. In 2021 she won the Fiction Prize at Salamander Magazine and in 2023, one of her short stories was anthologized in Flash Fiction America (Norton). Her story collection and novel-in-progress have been supported by Tin House Summer Workshops, Kenyon Review, Community of Writers, as well as the In Cahoots Residency. When she is not writing or revising the same sentence for the hundredth time, she is probably walking her two dogs, reading, or procrastibaking. Her website is nicolesimonsen.com.
Ian Hopps will read “The Last of his Kind,” by Nicole Simonsen. Ian is excited to return to Stories on Stage and bring voice to another author’s work. A member of Actor’s Equity, Ian is a graduate of San Francisco State and has performed in the Sacramento area with the Davis Shakespeare Festival, the Sacramento Theatre Company and Capital Stage where he was last seen in their production Clyde’s. He’s grateful for this reading opportunity and to connect again with artists in the region. You can learn more at www.ihopps.com — cheers to stories!