Writer-in-Residence Dawn Dorland will read excerpts from her debut novel Econoline via Facebook Live, followed by an opportunity for questions from the audience. Econoline, set principally in a trailer court in fictional Hickory County, features a microcosm of American poverty in a 1990s corn town. Interconnected storylines illustrate how some make able ascents in the economy while others falter, stymied by missed opportunities, trauma or cycles of violence, failing the American dream. Ms. Dorland approaches the novel from personal experiences of child poverty but imagines her way into other characters and demographics to produce fiction with political power. She envisions Econoline as a convergence of class experiences and testimonies otherwise siloed by geography, race and/or immigration status. Her aim is a novel in which some of literature's neglected voices—the children of PoCs, working class immigrants, and the white rural poor—speak between the same book covers.