Two Rivers Reading Series presents a reading and discussion of There’s Something I Want You To Do, featuring author Charles Baxter

As part of the Two Rivers Reading Series, author Charles Baxter (shown) will read from and discuss his book of short stories called There’s Something I Want You to Do at Anoka-Ramsey Community College’s Coon Rapids Campus on Wednesday, April 4 from noon to 12:50 pm and 2 to 2:50 pm in the Legacy Room.

March 23, 2018

As part of the Two Rivers Reading Series, author Charles Baxter will read from and discuss his book of short stories called There’s Something I Want You to Do at Anoka-Ramsey Community College’s Coon Rapids Campus on Wednesday, April 4 from noon to12:50 and 2 to 2:50 pm in the Legacy Room.

This event is free and open to the public and is supported by the English Division and Faculty Development. Attendees will have the opportunity to ask the author questions and get their book signed.

There’s Something I Want You to Do is an intriguing set of stories which are wound together by the intersecting personal stories of a collection of Minnesotan characters with the phrase “there’s something I want you to do” appearing in each story.  The stories are arranged in two parts according to the five virtues of bravery, loyalty, chastity, charity and forbearance, followed in part two by the vices of lust, sloth, avarice, gluttony and vanity.  Each of the characters struggles with the vices and virtues in unexpected ways. 

Jamie Quatro, author of I Want to Show You More, said of Baxter’s work: “With his latest collection, Charles Baxter has given us something altogether new in contemporary fiction: a series of moral tales that contain zero moralizing…Here is a cast of characters unparalleled since Sherwood Anderson’s The Book of the Grotesque, with a modern-day Minneapolis as tangible and strange as his Winesburg, Ohio.” 

Baxter won the Minnesota Book Award for Novel and Short Story in 2016 for There’s Something I Want You to Do. Charles Baxter is also the author of the novel The Feast of Love (a finalist for the National Book Award). The stories “Bravery” and “Chastity” from There’s Something I Want You to Do were featured in The Best American Short Stories.

“We are really looking forward to the opportunity to host award-winning author and University of Minnesota professor Charles Baxter to our campus,” said Jennifer Willcutt, Reading, English Language Learning, and Study Skills Faculty member and member of the Two Rivers Reading Series Committee.

The Two Rivers Reading Series provides students, faculty, staff and the public access to award-winning authors, poets and playwrights each semester. Two Rivers Reading Series events make learning more comprehensive by combining classwork with real-world experiences. More than 10 Faculty members at Anoka-Ramsey in several different composition, literature, reading, and creative writing classes are having students read There’s Something I Want You to Do in their courses this semester.

For more information about this and other educational activities at Anoka-Ramsey Community College, visit AnokaRamsey.edu. For more information about the Two Rivers Reading Series, contact English Faculty member Paige Riehl at Paige.Riehl@anokaramsey.edu.

Two Rivers Reading Series
Author Charles Baxter
Reading and Discussion: There’s Something I Want You to Do
Wednesday, April 4
noon to12:50 and 2 to 2:50 pm
Anoka-Ramsey Community College
Coon Rapids Campus Legacy Room