It’s that time of year again. To prepare for you for Thanksgiving dinner with relatives we wish we didn’t have, we’ll look at compassion through the art of craft the antagonist.

Grotto Nights is a monthly series at the Library featuring The Writers Grotto members who will showcase and discuss their writing around a theme of their choice.  Minna Dubin, Terry Tierney and Brad Balukjian will share strategies and discuss the complexities of writing unsavory characters, both real and imagined, with moderator Janine Kovac.

Minna Dubin is the author of MOM RAGE: The Everyday Crisis of Modern Motherhood. Her writing has been featured in the New York Times, Oprah Daily, The Times Sunday Magazine, Salon, Lit Hub, & Electric Literature. Minna lives in Berkeley, CA with her husband, two kids, and no pets because enough is enough. 

Terry Tierney is the author of The Poet’s Garage and the novels Lucky Ride and The Bridge on Beer River. His poems appear in The Bellevue Literary Review, Remington Review, Reed Magazine, and Rust + Moth. His new poetry book, Why Trees Stay Outside, was published 10/1/24 by Unsolicited Press.

Brad Balukjian is a freelance journalist and entomologist who has written two narrative nonfiction books, The Six Pack and The Wax Pack. He has been published in Rolling Stone, National Geographic, Smithsonian and many others. As part of his PhD research, he discovered and described 17 species of plant bugs in Tahiti.

A former professional ballet dancer, Janine Kovac is the author of the memoirs The Nutcracker Chronicles and Spinning: Choreography for Coming Home. Janine is an alumna of Hedgebrook and a MacDowell fellow. If she had any free time, she’d spend it knitting.