• BY APRILL BRANDON - ABRANDON@VICAD.COM
• Originally published November 16, 2009 at 4:51 p.m., updated November 16, 2009 at 11:05 p.m.

• Excerpt from "Change in the World"

  By Cris Mazza

  Apparently sparrows lived inside the Home Depot, it was that big. They flitted and chirped in the metal rafters overhead. Marcy was looking up as she wheeled a clunky lumber cart ...

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Excerpt from "Change in the World"

By Cris Mazza

Apparently sparrows lived inside the Home Depot, it was that big. They flitted and chirped in the metal rafters overhead. Marcy was looking up as she wheeled a clunky lumber cart that never put all four wheels on the ground at the same time. As she was pausing over at the bins of nails, adding in her head, an employee passed, directing a customer farther down the aisle toward metal screws and bolts. The customer was someone Marcy knew. It was Colin, a boy from high school. Not just any boy, but her boyfriend in the 10th and 11th grades. She knew it was him even though this man was getting fat. His pants were too tight and he had a gut straining against a T-shirt over his overly-western belt buckle. His face was wide, his nose was broad, his head was enormous. His hair was considerably shorter than in 1978. He played the snare drum in marching band and tympani in the school orchestra, which replaced marching band as an elective in the spring. Colin had liked a girl who played cello as much as he liked Marcy, so he alternated between the two of them, for two years going with Marcy during band season, and the cello girl during orchestra season. In 11th grade, when the band visited Disneyland, Marcy had shoplifted a knit hat from a gift kiosk when Colin did; she thought if she didn't, it might be his excuse that year to break up with her so he could go with the cello player during orchestra season. At first Marcy was only choosing one of the longshoremen's hats because Colin was getting one. Then when she turned toward the cash register, he'd said, "Are you going to pay for it?" He'd balled his hat in his fist and turned to walk away, so she'd followed. They'd gotten caught. A grim plainclothes security guard led them to an office down a concealed alley off Disneyland's main street where they sat opposite a desk from another man, the shoplifted hats on the desktop along with some of the other junk they'd actually bought. On the bus ride back to Sacramento, Colin and Marcy hadn't spoken. They'd sat crushed together in the back of the bus, Colin's hand in Marcy's shirt, and Marcy still wept every now and then because she knew he would break up with her for the cello girl anyway, and he had.

IF YOU GO

WHAT: Cris Mazza will be the next speaker for the American Book Review

WHEN: noon on Thursday

WHERE: Alcorn Auditorium at University of Houston-Victoria

COST: The event is free and open to the public.

Growing up, writer Cris Mazza's constant companion was her typewriter. This may explain how her first novel, "How to Leave a Country," won the PEN/Nelson Algren Award for book-length fiction while it was still just a manuscript.

This might also help explain the lengthy list of publications currently under her belt.

The author of 15 books, as well as the editor of two anthologies of women's fiction, Mazza will be the last speaker of the 2009 American Book Review fall reading series, which will be at noon Thursday in Alcorn Auditorium on the University of Houston-Victoria campus. A prominent post-feminist writer, Mazza will discuss the path that led her to becoming a writer and also read selections from her most recently published book, according to a university news release.

The book, "Trickle-Down Timeline," is set in the 1980's and is a piece of nostalgia for people who had nothing to consume in the consumer era, Mazza said.

Although she already has 10 novels, four short story collections and a collection of personal essays to her name, that hasn't slowed Mazza. This spring, her newest novel, "Various Men Who Knew Us As Girls," will be released.

A native of southern California, Mazza attended San Diego State University and then crossed the country to finish her Master of Fine Arts degree in writing at Brooklyn College, according to her biography. An NEA fellow who has taught at numerous universities, she is currently a professor and director of the Program for Writers at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

"Cris Mazza is one of my heroes," Jeffrey Di Leo, editor and publisher of the American Book Review, said in the news release. "She is one of contemporary American fiction's most distinctive and fearless voices. I'm thrilled that she will be taking part in our reading series."

The event is free and open to the public. For more information, go to www.AmericanBookReview.org.

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