Monday, November 16, 2026 at 7:00 PM
Skylight Books, Los Angeles
Winner of the AWP Grace Paley Prize for Short Fiction The stories of Adam Peterson’s funny, daring, and deliciously outrageous debut Any Time But This Time span our history and confront our future. From the first woman on Earth grieving among the Neanderthals to the last man alive nursing the dying flame of love, this collection moves across human history and geography to reveal us at our best and lament our worst. Jesus declares himself a superhero. Lost sailors launch an ill-fated attempt to colonize medieval England. A young woman fights to commandeer the founding of America. A pioneer’s wife satisfies her endless sexual appetite in barren Nebraska. Children hurtle into space to confront alien life—even though they really, really just want love. For fans of George Saunders and Kelly Link, these voices, unbound by time and undaunted by consequence, show us that there are truly no limits to what a short story—so long as it centers our relentless human heart—can do. Adam Peterson is a writer and filmmaker living in Los Angeles. He’s the author of the prose poetry collections My Untimely Death, The Flasher, and [SPOILER ALERT] (with Laura Eve Engel). His short fiction has appeared in Epoch, The Kenyon Review, The Southern Review, and a mess of other places. His films have played at HollyShorts, Fantasia Fest, and Just for Laughs, among many other festivals. Aja Gabel is the author of the novels Lightbreakers and The Ensemble, both from Riverhead Books. Her prose can be found in The Cut, LA Times, BOMB, and elsewhere. She studied writing at Wesleyan University and the University of Virginia, and was a fellow at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown. She currently lives and writes in Los Angeles, where she is also a screenwriter.