Glimmer Train Stories, #85 - Softcover

Karen Malley; Sanja Jagesic; Susan Messer; Janis Hubschman; Edward Hardy; Clark Knowles; Baird Harper; Marjorie Celona; Sari Rose; Pinckney Benedict; Alexander Lumans (interviewer); Andrew McFadyen-Ketchum (interviewer)

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1595530347 ISBN 13: 9781595530349

Publisher: Glimmer Train Press, Inc., 2012

Synopsis

Literary short stories by established and emerging writers.

Karen Malley
Roof Dog
"You fell perfectly. If everyone fell like that no one would ever get hurt." "I hit my head. That hurt." "You have a strong head. You're American. You drink a lot of milk."

Sanja Jagesic
Bibby Challenge
I don't like how my mom packs me homemade bread for lunch. All the German students have nice sliced brown store-bought bread. I throw my lunch away most days. Or I eat it secretly in the bathroom so that no one can see my big Bosnian bread wrapped in aluminum foil.

Susan Messer
Angstschweiss
"Look at me," Joe said. It was as if he had been waiting, waiting for the son to show up, as if he'd had his opening remark planned all the while. He gestured with his hands, to show his whole situation, not just the leg that was gone but the whole hopeless mess of it.

Janis Hubschman
Wilderness of Ghosts
My bedroom, after the shared dorm room, feels spacious. The walls are mossy green and the furniture is from Ikea: Ektorp.

Edward Hardy
Hole in the Sand
More sleep with less disturbing dreams would help, too. He knows the dreams would get better if he could just stop reading Enemy at the Gates, that history of the battle of Stalingrad he found on the beach-house bookshelf. But Martin always has odd vacation dreams.

Clark Knowles
Each Other's Business
And by Saturday, a whole week without Fellowship in Christ, he was just ill-tempered all over the place.

Baird Harper
Patient History
The Navy. The Naval Code. Nuke subs. These words he was saying were hers now--more hers than his even--and they meant something. They described who she was and was becoming.

Marjorie Celona
Gladstone
"We should pretend we don't speak English," says my father, who has been sitting on the porch in his armchair, listening to the whole thing from behind the Help Wanted section of the newspaper.

Sari Rose
Sweethearts
I have one sister five states away, and Sam has two sisters and one brother, three, four, and six states away. We are kindred seeds--a family of peas or nasturtiums--separated by circumstance: colleges, marriages, jobs, storms, heavy winds.

Pinckney Benedict
Interview by Andrew McFadyen-Ketchum and Alexander Lumans
I don't have to make my living, at least in any direct way, from my writing, and so my writing can be exactly what I want it to be. It can look exactly the way I want it to look. It can look exactly like the inside of my skull.

About this title

About the Author:

Karen Malley earned her MFA at the University of Massachusetts in 1993. Her short stories have appeared in a number of literary magazines, including the Iowa Review, Arkansas Review, Kansas Quarterly, Sonora Review, Bottomfish Magazine, Fiddlehead, and the New Orphic Review.

Sanja Jagesic was born in Zenica, Bosnia and Herzegovina, in 1986. She lived on a refugee ship in Hamburg, Germany, during the civil war in former Yugoslavia. She graduated from Wellesley College in 2008 and is currently a PhD student in the Sociology Department at the University of Chicago. "Bibby Challenge" is her first published fiction.

Susan Messer has published fiction and nonfiction in North American Review, Colorado Review, Creative Nonfiction, Fourth Genre, and Another Chicago Magazine. Her first novel, Grand River and Joy, published in 2009, was chosen by the University of Michigan Honors College as its 2010 summer reading book for freshmen.

Janis Hubschman's stories have appeared or are forthcoming in Michigan Quarterly Review, Exquisite Corpse, the Saint Ann's Review, Front Porch Journal, Literary Mama, Blood Orange Review, Storyglossia, and Foundling Review. She teaches at Montclair State University.

Edward Hardy's most recent novel is Keeper and Kid. His stories have appeared in Ploughshares, Epoch, GQ, New England Review, Prairie Schooner, and many other magazines. He grew up in Ithaca, New York, and lives outside Providence, Rhode Island, with his wife and two boys.

Clark Knowles teaches writing at the University of New Hampshire, where he received his MA in writing. He earned his MFA in Writing from Bennington College. The New Hampshire State Arts Council awarded him an Individual Fellowship for the year 2009. His fiction is forthcoming in Harpur Palate, Conjunctions, Limestone, Nimrod, Eclipse, and can be found in numerous other literary magazines.

Pinckney Benedict published two collections of short fiction (Town Smokes, Ontario Review Press, and The Wrecking Yard, Doubleday) and a novel (Dogs of God, Doubleday) by the age of thirty-three. Benedict is also author of the screenplay Four Days, starring Colm Meaney, Lolita Davidovich, and William Forsythe, is co-founder of the Tinker Mountain Writers retreat at Hollins University, on the faculty at Southern Illinois University, and is co-editor of Surreal South, a biennial anthology of fiction and poetry. Fifteen years after Dogs of God and nearly twenty since his last collection of short fiction, Benedict's third book of short stories, Miracle Boy and Other Stories, was released with Press 53.

Baird Harper's fiction has appeared in Tin House, CutBank, and Mid-American Review, and has been anthologized in Best New American Voices. He holds an MFA in Writing from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

Marjorie Celona has degrees in writing from the University of Victoria and the Iowa Writers' Workshop. Her stories have appeared in The Best American Nonrequired Reading, Crazyhorse, Best Canadian Stories, The Fiddlehead, Indiana Review, and elsewhere. She is at work on a novel.

Sari Rose's stories have appeared in the Iowa Review, New Millennium Writings, and International Journal of Poetry and Prose. She has won the Katherine Anne Porter Prize in Fiction, the New Millennium Prize in Fiction, and was a PEN New England New Discovery recipient.

About this edition

• Publisher: Glimmer Train Press, Inc.
• Publication date: 2012
• ISBN 10: 1595530347
• ISBN 13: 9781595530349
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 204
• Editor: Susan Burmeister-Brown, Linda B. Swanson-Davies
• Illustrator: Jane Zwinger