Mitch Wieland Book Launch

Join us in celebrating Professor Mitch Wieland and the publication of his latest novel, "The Ghosts of Okuma," with a reception and reading on Friday, November 5 starting at 5 PM.

Event Details

5 PM - 7 PM

Friday, November 5

Bishop Barnwell Room, Student Union Building

Free - There will light refreshments and a cash bar. Books will be available for purchase and signing.

Praise for "The Ghosts of Okuma"

"A strange, beautiful, and unexpected exploration of the fallout of family tragedy."

—Kirkus Reviews, (starred review) [read full review]

“By turns comic and tragic, Mitch Wieland’s The Ghosts of Okuma is a sharply-written and brilliantly-paced novel that manages to become both a satisfying love story and a devastating look at the lives of one family shattered by suicide and another displaced by the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster. It’s so funny, charming, and infused with tenderness that it’s a pure pleasure to read—even as it’s simultaneously deadly serious. Like Virgil leading Dante through the underworld, Yoshimi leads Wyatt ever closer to the damaged reactors, where they find love and a path toward rebuilding their shattered families.”

—Anthony Doerr, author of All the Light We Cannot See, winner of the Pulitzer Prize

About Mitch Wieland

Mitch Wieland is the author of the novels Willy Slater’s Lane and God’s Dogs. Willy Slater’s Lane received starred reviews in Publisher’s Weekly and Booklist, and was optioned for a film. Named Idaho Book of the Year, God’s Dogs was featured in the annual Best of the West prize anthology, and was a top finalist for the John Gardner Fiction Award. Wieland’s short stories have appeared in The Missouri Review, The Southern Review, The Kenyon Review, The Yale Review, TriQuarterly, The Sewanee Review, Shenandoah, StoryQuarterly, Prairie Schooner, among other publications. Wieland is the recipient of a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, a Christopher Isherwood Fellowship, a Boise State University Arts and Humanities Fellowship, and two Literature Fellowships from the Idaho Commission on the Arts.

A co-founder of the MFA program at Boise State University, Wieland was its director for ten years. Currently in his thirtieth year at Boise State, he has served as the founding editor of the award-winning Idaho Review, and teaches MFA and BFA classes in fiction writing and publishing/editing.

Pre-order "The Ghosts of Okuma" here.