On May 4, Bona Fide Books of Meyers will launch its first publication, “Permanent Vacation: Twenty Writers on Work and Life in Our National Parks, Volume 1: The West,” with a reading at Lake Tahoe Community College.

The 7pm event in the Aspen Room at the South Lake Tahoe college will feature local essayists Joseph Flannery and Janet Smith, whose work appears in the collection. Tahoe City’s Flannery wrote of his encounters with grizzly bears while working in Yellowstone, while South Lake Tahoe’s Smith detailed leaving home after high school for life in Yosemite Valley.

“The stories in this collection are incredible,” Kim Wyatt, owner and publisher of Bona Fide Books, said in a press release. “We received over 200 submissions, and it was tough to keep it to 20. Something about living in nature makes great storytellers, and these writers should be widely read.”

“Permanent Vacation” is available at Bona Fide Books, Amazon and some bookstores. Starting May 4 it will also be available online at www.pvstories.net, where park workers can share their stories. Readers can also go there to find out more about their favorite “Permanent Vacation” contributors, who will be updating the site this summer with video and photos of hikes, climbs, and river trips.

Bona Fide’s next two books will come out later this year. “Mud Cakes,” the winner of the Melissa Lanitis Gregory Poetry Prize, will be released in October, and “Tahoe Blues,” a collection of flash fiction and micro essays about life at the lake, will debut before Christmas.

The reading is free and open to the public.

For more information, contact Kim Wyatt at editor@bonafidebooks.com or go online.