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"Controlled Conversations" with Karol Lagodzki

Co-presented with the Prince George's County Office of Human Rights

The Prince George’s County Office of Human Rights and Prince George’s County Memorial Library System present a conversation with Karol Lagodzki about his exquisite new book, "Controlled Conversations."

In 1982 Soviet-controlled Poland—a time and place of suspicion and mistrust—when geopolitical forces and violent men descend upon her little town of Zygmuntowo, Emilia must decide if she’s willing to risk prison or worse for self-respect and for her unexpected love.

A telephone station switchboard operator ordered to monitor the calls she connects, Emilia overhears a mysterious coded conversation. It continues to distract her, but not as much as the growing realization that she’s falling in unsanctioned love with her best friend Kalina. Meanwhile, outside the city of Frombork, Antek, a shipyard engineer and a Solidarity labor union treasurer, escapes from prison and works to recover the union’s money, a task which in time leads him to Emilia’s town. In the metropolitan city of Gdańsk, Roman, a secret police major, wants the money for himself and dreams of his own escape and the magical beaches of Rio de Janeiro.

As the only daughter of a local Communist Party apparatchik, Emilia has enjoyed a sheltered life, but with the advent of martial law, her mother’s influence can no longer shield her. She faces choices she never expected to make when she discovers her best friend’s and lover’s involvement with the resistance. With new allies and enemies in town, the time to choose a side is now.

In his debut novel, Karol Lagodzki asks: What separates people who transcend their fear and take risks for the sake of change from the rest of us? The answer is up to the readers.

Karol Lagodzki, a native of Poland, is an exophonic, English-language author of fiction. His stories have appeared in Invisible City, Storm Cellar, NUNUM, Streetlight Magazine, and elsewhere, and he has won Panel Magazine’s Ruritania Prize for Short Fiction. "Controlled Conversations" is his debut novel.

He holds an MFA in creative writing, buys more books than he can read or afford—usually novels and short story collections, though he’s been known to pick up an odd book of poetry or accessible science—and gives back to the literary community by serving as a reader for several journals. Karol’s non-writing careers have ranged from fixing stucco while dangling from roofs in Paris to sorting through human cadaver heads in Florida to developing and marketing medical devices for critically ill people in the American Midwest, but his true ambition is to remain a student for as long as he possibly can and make sure more stories make it out onto the page.

Karol lives halfway down a Southern Indiana ravine with his wonderful, unconventional family, a scurry of squirrels, a passel of possums, a gaze of raccoons, a descent of woodpeckers, and a large dog.

Find him at klagodzki.com