On February 11, the FACT Reading Group took local author Maureen F. McHugh to dinner at Mongolian Grille. We’d recently read her collection Mothers and Other Monsters, and earlier had read her novel Half the Day is Night. Between the Reading Group, the author, and her husband, we had sixteen people at dinner.

We talked with Maureen about a variety of things: her writing, travels in China, dogs, and her day job as a writer for alternate reality games. She told amusing anecdotes about the alternate reality games she created for Halo 2 and Nine Inch Nails. Two members of our group were Maureen’s former students from Clarion, so we talked a bit about writing workshops. We complimented her on the stories in Mothers and Other Monsters, and a couple of us got Maureen to sign their copies of the book.

Dinner lasted nearly two hours. Everyone seemed to have a fine time. Thanks to Ms. McHugh for her participation.

–A. T. Campbell, III