Meet
AYSE PAPATYA BUCAK
discussing
The Trojan War Museum and other stories
Wednesday, August 21, 8pm
Books & Books, Coral Gables
In Ayse Papatya Bucak’s dreamlike narratives, dead girls recount the effects of an earthquake and a chess-playing automaton falls in love. A student stops eating and no one knows whether her act is personal or political. A Turkish wrestler, a hero in the East, is seen as a brute in the West. The anguish of an Armenian refugee is “performed” at an American fund-raiser. An Ottoman ambassador in Paris amasses a tantalizing collection of erotic art. And in the masterful title story, the Greek god Apollo confronts his personal history and bewails his Homeric reputation as he tries to memorialize, and make sense of, generations of war.
Ayse Papatya Bucak was born in Istanbul, Turkey—to an American mother and a Turkish father—but spent most of her childhood in Havertown, PA, just outside of Philadelphia. Her BA is from Princeton University and her MFA from Arizona State University. You can find her stories and essays in a variety of journals, including Creative Nonfiction, Witness, Kenyon Review, Prairie Schooner, The Pinch, The Iowa Review, and Brevity.
Two of the stories included in The Trojan War Museum were chosen for the O. Henry and Pushcart Prizes. A lot of her work has been written at residencies, including Studios of Key West, Hedgebrook, Brush Creek, Betsy Hotel and Millay Colony for the Arts. She teaches in the MFA program at Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton, Florida, and is a contributing editor for the journal Copper Nickel.