Writer Thomas Dodson will discuss his new collection of short stories “No Use Pretending” from 7 to 8 p.m. Monday, Oct. 30, at Bloomsbury Books, 290 E. Main St., Ashland.

The characters in “No Use Pretending” have been forced into conditions of life that they find unbearable, and the stories chart their often tragically misguided attempts to relieve their suffering. This collection encompasses diverse genres, from ecologically-informed realism to a Kafkaesque fairy tale, from fabulist “weird fiction” to an episode from The Odyssey that becomes a meditation on what distinguishes human beings from animals, inviting readers to reconsider moral and ideological certainties, to take a fresh look at such issues as fracking and drone warfare.

Thomas A. Dodson is assistant professor and librarian at Southern Oregon University. He lives in Ashland, Oregon.