Author to read at PT Shorts

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A prize-winning author is to read one of her new stories at this Saturday’s PT Shorts, a monthly program that coincides with Art Walk.

Joan Leegant, who currently lives in Seattle, is to share a story titled “The Baghdadi,” which received special mention for the 2014 Pushcart Prize awards. The reading is 7:30 p.m. at the Key City Public Theatre Playhouse, 419 Washington St.

Leegant is to be joined by local actors Judith Glass Collins and Don White. As is becoming a new year’s tradition for the January PT Shorts, the event includes cider and doughnuts, White said.

“The Baghdadi” is set in Israel, where a visiting professor from Boston forms an unlikely bond with an Israeli from Iraq, when the oldest Jew in Baghdad is airlifted to Tel Aviv by the U.S. Central Command.

White and Collins are to read “The Diviners of Desire: A Modern Fable,” from Leegant’s collection of short stories titled “An Hour of Paradise.” In the story, an American mother wants her only daughter to marry a “nice Jewish boy.” The young woman travels to Israel, wanders into a butcher shop and there, through a series of weird coincidences meets her soulmate.

Leegant’s stories are told with the understanding that families are similar, regardless of their religious or ethnic backgrounds, White said.

Leegant started writing after graduating from law school, and discovered that writing was like falling in love. She has won many literary awards for her short story collection, including the Pen/New England Book Award, and she was selected as a Barnes & Noble “Discover Great New Writers” pick.