This afternoon, the Oxford American is hosting a very special book reading by contributing writer and editor Harrison Scott Key. He will be reading from his latest release, “The World’s Largest Man,” beginning at 4:00 PM at the OA Annex (1300 Main Street, Little Rock). This event is free and open to the public. Following the reading, join the author and Oxford American editors at 5:00 PM next door at South on Main for a social hour of cocktails and conversation!

“The World’s Largest Man” is a grand comic satire of the contemporary American South and the tender story of a boy and his Bunyanesque father, told with the comic punch and the wild, burlesque charm of Mark Twain. Harrison grew up in Mississippi, where, he says, “there was very little to do but shoot things or get them pregnant.” Of his father, he says, “The man was perhaps better suited to living in a remote frontier wilderness of the 19th century than contemporary America, with all its progressive ideas, and paved roads, and lack of armed duels. He was a great man, who taught us many things: How to fight, how to work, how to cheat, how to pray to Jesus about it, how to kill things with guns and knives and also, if necessary, with hammers.” Sly, heartfelt, and tirelessly hilarious, “The World’s Largest Man” is an unforgettable memoir—the story of a boy’s struggle to reconcile himself with a place and a father it took him a lifetime to understand.

Harrison Scott Key is the author of the memoir “The World’s Largest Man” (HarperCollins) and a contributing editor for Oxford American magazine. His nonfiction has also appeared in The Best American Travel Writing, The New York Times, Outside, McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, Salon, Reader’s Digest, Image, Creative Nonfiction, and elsewhere, and his work has been adapted for the stage and performed by Chicago’s Neo-Futurists in their show “Too Much Light Makes the Baby Go Blind.” He teaches writing at the Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD) in Savannah, Georgia, where he lives with his wife and three children.