Community Voices: Lesley Mahoney O’Connell Presents Ripple Effects and Other Stories

Join author Lesley Mahoney O’Connell for a talk on Tuesday, August 4 at 4 p.m. Free and open to all. She will discuss her recently published collection, Ripple Effects: And Other Stories. Part of the Library’s Community Voices series.

Ripple Effects features mostly quiet but intelligent characters who see themselves as outsiders in their own worlds. O’Connell lets readers listen as they work their way toward decisions they can somehow live with. Some swim through currents of parental self-centeredness; others, lacking ordinary filters, dream impossible dreams as they ignore career crises and marital ennui. O’Connell is especially good at exploring the interior lives, the caves and cliffs carved by deep losses, creating empathy and often a sense of peace in readers.

Lesley Mahoney O’Connell lives on the South Shore of Massachusetts with her husband and son. Her fiction has appeared in Post Road, Psychopomp, and Solstice. She co-ran a reading series in Jamaica Plain, MA, and regularly takes classes at Boston’s GrubStreet and Provincetown’s Fine Arts Work Center. She works with health care in communications, marketing, and digital strategy. –Golden Antelope Press