Catherine Pierce + Michael Kardos for Foxes for Everybody & Fun City Heist

Overview

Join us as we welcome former Mississippi Poet Laureate Catherine Pierce and Pushcart Prize-winning author Michael Kardos for their books, Foxes for Everybody, an essay collection of meditations on time, motherhood, and the ordinary beauty of everyday life, and the brilliantly funny, twisty heist caper Fun City Heist.

About the books

Foxes for Everybody

Meditations on time, motherhood, and the ordinary beauty of everyday life

Like a newborn’s patterns of sleeping and waking, the revelations of motherhood don’t follow a reasonable schedule, and there’s no clocking out. Organized around the hours of the day, Foxes for Everybody gives voice to the marvels, fears, absurdities, and astonishments of parenthood. These essays offer twenty-four glimpses into how we experience time, our families, our planet, and all of those small moments that aren’t small at all. In memories and reflections that weave through tornadoes and jellyfish, cemeteries and carousels, mortality, mental health, and the exquisite gift of a perfect sentence, acclaimed writer Catherine Pierce reminds us that fear and joy can and do live side by side, and urges us to stay awake—even when, especially when, we’re at the brink of exhaustion—to the possibility of wonder.

Fun City Heist

Mo Melnick used to be a drummer in rock band Sunshine Apocalypse. He used to be someone. These days he rents beach umbrellas on the Jersey Shore.

The last thing he expects is for Johnny Clay, his old bandmate turned enemy, to ask him a favor. Johnny's dying, and before he passes he wants Sunshine Apocalypse to reunite for one last gig at Fun City, the beachfront amusement park where their musical journey began.

Mo's in--reluctantly. But then Johnny reveals his real plan: He doesn't just want to play at Fun City on the fourth of July. He wants to rob it.

The plan is crazy. It has more holes than a golf course. But Mo's sick of barely keeping his head above water, so he and his gang of middle-aged has-beens dive into what will be the most outrageous heist New Jersey's ever seen--if, that is, they can pull it off alive . . .

Packed with astonishing twists and laugh-out-loud moments, Michael Kardos' unique comedic thriller is perfect for fans of Elmore Leonard and Donald Westlake.

About the authors

Catherine Pierce served as Poet Laureate of Mississippi from 2021 to 2025 and is the author of five poetry collections, including Dear Beast (Saturnalia 2026). Her work has appeared in The Best American Poetry, The New York Times, The Nation, American Poetry Review, and elsewhere, and has won two Pushcart Prizes. A recipient of fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Academy of American Poets, Pierce taught at Mississippi State for seventeen years, where she co-directed the creative writing program.

Michael Kardos is the author of six books of fiction, including the novel Bluff and the story collection Quick Change. His stories have won two Pushcart Prizes, and his debut collection won the Mississippi Institute of Arts & Letters award for fiction. Michael grew up on the Jersey Shore, received a degree in music from Princeton University, and played the drums professionally for a number of years before turning to fiction writing. He co-directed the creative writing program at Mississippi State University for over a dozen years and now lives with his family at the beach in Delaware.