Mark D. Baumgartner discusses Last Chance For a Slow Dance with John James

Carmichael's is excited to host Mark D. Baumgartner for his collection of stories, Last Chance For a Slow Dance. Mark will be joined in conversation by John James. About the Book: Last Chance for a Slow Dance gathers eleven sharp, darkly funny, and quietly devastating stories about endings-of relationships, of childhood, of illusions, of the selves we thought we were. Set largely in the overlooked stretches of American "fly-over" country, with a few detours abroad, these stories trace the choices people make at the edge of who they are and who they might still become. About the Authors: Mark D. Baumgartner is a fiction writer who lives in East Tennessee with his wife and kids. His writing has been published widely in literary journals, including The Southern Review, Confrontation, Best of Ohio Anthology, Bellingham Review, Silk Road, Yemassee, Brilliant Corners, Wisconsin Review, Phoebe, and Tampa Review, among others. His fiction is featured on a recent episode of the Rock is Lit podcast, as a winner of the 2024 Bill Hallberg prize in short fiction. His story, “The Great Siwash Shoe War,” won the 2014 Fugue prize in short fiction. His writing has twice been nominated for inclusion in the Pushcart prize anthology. He has worked in various editorial capacities at Mid-American Review, River Styx and Witness. For twelve years he was editor of Aethlon: The Journal of Sport Literature. He has earned a PhD from U of Nevada-Las Vegas, where he was a Schaeffer/Black Mountain fellow in creative writing, and an MFA degree from Bowling Green State U. He teaches creative writing and American literature at East Tennessee State U. John James is the author of two books and three chapbooks, among them The Milk Hours (Milkweed, 2019), Extinction Song (Tupelo, 2026), and The Delusion of Being Absolute, forthcoming from Milkweed Editions in 2028. His poems appear in The Iowa Review, New England Review, Los Angeles Review of Books, Poem-a-Day, and elsewhere. He lives in Louisville, where he is a member of the Sublimity City poetry collective.