Dover Library hosts author Patricia Grace King

Author Patricia Grace King will speak at Dover Public Library at 6:30 PM on Wednesday, September 30. King will talk about her book Those Who Vanish, for which she was awarded the 2026 Drue Heinz Literature Award. The book is a collection of short stories about the daily disappearances of Guatemalan citizens during the decades-long civil conflict in their homeland. The collection addresses a vital question: When all certainties are snatched away, what remains of lives, of memory, of faith?  A book signing will follow the program.

The setting for Those Who Vanish is Guatemala, where Patricia lived for three years as an accompanier of refugees with Witness for Peace during the civil war, and later as a language school director. Patricia’s first book, Day of All Saints, also set in Guatemala, won the 2017 Miami University Novella Prize.

“Patricia Grace King brings personal experience about the Guatemalan civil war and its aftermath,” says Sherrel Rieger, programming specialist. “Her short stories shed light on the trauma endured by indigenous peoples during the conflict.”

Patricia Grace King grew up in North Carolina’s Appalachian foothills, the granddaughter of Mennonite preachers on both sides of the family. After moving to Spain at nineteen, she became addicted to travel and has since lived in various parts of Central America, as well as in Atlanta, Chicago, and Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley. Patricia currently lives with her husband, David Janzen, in Durham, England.

King holds an MFA from Warren Wilson College’s Program for Writers and a Ph.D. from Emory University, where she was a Dean’s Teaching Fellow. She was the 2013-2014 Carol Houck Smith Fellow at the Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing and has been awarded additional fellowships and grants from the Vermont Studio Center, the Barbara Deming Memorial Fund, and the Illinois Arts Council. Her stories have been published by Ploughshares, The Gettysburg Review, Narrative Magazine, The Florida Review, and other journals.