Twenty-five high school painters, including students from Fenwick, will show and sell original canvases at The Book Loft on Tuesday, Sept. 1, when Forest Park author Mark Benson releases his YA horror novel "The Scattering" at the Lake Street bookstore.

Each canvas was inspired by a different page from the book. Benson contacted art teachers at Fenwick, Morton East, Morton West and other area schools to recruit the young artists, turning what could have been a standard signing into a community art showcase.

The idea came from the novel itself. "The Scattering" centers on a teenage painter who wakes from a recurring nightmare to find he has become colorblind and can no longer paint. A pivotal gallery scene in the story gave Benson the concept for the real-life event.

"I'm going to be happy when someone comes by and buys a book from me, and I sign it for them," Benson told the Forest Park Review. "But when I glance up and see someone sliding cash to one of these painters and walking out the door with their canvas, that's going to be the best part."

Benson said many of the student artists may not have shown or sold their work publicly before.

The Book Loft, at 1047 Lake St., opened earlier this year in part of the former Book Table storefront, according to the Wednesday Journal. The Book Table closed in January 2025 after 22 years, and the new shop has been building its own identity as a community gathering space. The event begins at 6:30 p.m.

"The Scattering" is Benson's second YA novel and his first horror book. His debut, "Isaac in the Sky," was self-published in November 2025. Benson, who manages restaurants at Brookfield Zoo and does educational programming for NASA, grew up near Bachelor's Grove Cemetery in Chicago's south suburbs. He told the Forest Park Review that the novel's central nightmare scene came from one of his own dreams and survived six drafts unchanged.

Benson said the book draws on Chicago-area ghost lore but prioritizes its characters' relationships over scares. He wrote it in third person after feeling the story's world was too expansive for first-person narration, and he used what he calls method writing, visiting the physical settings of scenes to draft them.

Free copies of "The Scattering" will also be available in Little Free Library boxes in Oak Park, Forest Park and River Forest. More details are at authormarkbenson.com.