Friday, August 22, 2025 at 7:00 PM
Skylight Books, Los Angeles
 **Gilt-edged stories that slice clean through the mundanity of modern life, from the author of _Same Bed Different Dreams,_ a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and winner of the _Los Angeles Times_ Book Prize.** In “Machine City” a college student’s chance role in a friend’s movie blurs the line between his character and his true self. (Is he a robot?) In “Slide to Unlock” a man comes to terms with his life via the passwords he struggles to remember in extremis. (What’s his mom’s name backward?) And in “Weird Menace” a director and faded movie star gab about science fiction, bad costume choices, and lost loves on a commentary track for a B-film from the ’80s that neither remembers all that well. In Ed Park’s utterly original collection, _An Oral History of Atlantis,_ characters bemoan their fleeting youth, focus on their breathing, meet cute, break up, write book reviews, translate ancient glyphs, bid on stuff online, whale watch, and once in a while find solace in the sublime. Throughout, Park deploys his trademark wit to create a world both strikingly recognizable and delightfully other. Spanning a quarter century, these sixteen stories tell the absurd truth about our lives. They capture the moment when the present becomes the past—and are proof positive that Ed Park is one of the most imaginative and insightful writers working today. **Ed Park** is the author of the novels _Same Bed Different Dreams_, which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, won the _Los Angeles Times_ Book Prize for Fiction, was named a Top Ten Book of the Year by _Publishers Weekly_ and was a _New York Times_ Notable Book; and _Personal Days_, a finalist for the PEN/Hemingway Award. His short fiction has appeared in _The New Yorker_, _McSweeney’s_, _Vice_, _Harvard Review_, and other periodicals and anthologies, and he writes regularly for _The New York Review of Books, Harper’s, The Atlantic, Bookforum,_ and elsewhere. Ed was a founding editor of _The Believer_ and the former literary editor of _The Voice Literary Supplement_, and has also worked in publishing. Born in Buffalo, he lives in Manhattan with his family, and currently teaches writing at Princeton University. **Sandi Tan** is a Singapore-born, Los Angeles–based filmmaker and novelist. Her Sundance-winning Netflix documentary film _Shirkers_ was shortlisted for the Best Documentary Oscar and was named Best Documentary by the Los Angeles Film Critics Association, among other accolades. She is the author of _Lurkers_ (2021), described by Kevin Kwan as “pure genius," and _The Black Isle_ (2012), a thriller about a female ghost hunter.