Hermitage Artist Retreat to Host New Program THE FANTASY OF REALITY

The Hermitage Artist Retreat has announced a new December program, The Fantasy of Reality, featuring acclaimed author and Hermitage Fellow Joseph Earl Thomas. The event will take place on Thursday, December 18, at 6 p.m. at Bookstore1 in downtown Sarasota.

Thomas, known for his inventive use of form spanning memoir, fiction, poetry, and hybrid work, will read from both new and published material. His writing frequently explores the intersection between fantasy and reality, challenging expectations and blending genres in unexpected ways.

Thomas’ memoir Sink was praised by The New York Times as “extraordinary,” while his debut novel God Bless You, Otis Spunkmeyer earned high acclaim from fellow authors, including National Book Award winner Justin Torres, who described it as “direct communication from the soul.”

A prolific writer and educator, Thomas is the author of Sink (longlisted for the PEN/Jean Stein Book Award and shortlisted for the Patrick Saroyan International Writing Prize), God Bless You, Otis Spunkmeyer (longlisted for the Carnegie Medal for Literary Excellence, finalist for the Los Angeles Times Art Seidenbaum Award, and winner of the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize), and the forthcoming story collection Leviathan Beach.

His work has appeared in The Kenyon Review, The Paris Review, The Verge, Harper’s, Virginia Quarterly Review, Vanity Fair, The Yale Review, The Massachusetts Review, and Dilettante Army. A graduate of the University of Notre Dame’s MFA program and holder of a PhD in English from the University of Pennsylvania, Thomas currently serves on the writing faculty at Sarah Lawrence College and teaches in the low-residency MFA programs at Holy Family and Randolph Colleges. He also teaches at the Brooklyn Institute for Social Research, where his courses span Black Studies, Poetics, Queer Theory, and Video Games.