Glimmer Train Stories, #32 - Softcover

Laura Oliver; Peter Lefcourt; Janet Belding; Jana Martin; Lee Martin; Nancy Reisman; Victoria Lancelotta

Softcover

ISBN 10: 188096631X ISBN 13: 9781880966310

Publisher: Glimmer Train Press Inc., 1999

Synopsis

Rare book

About this title

About the Author

LAURA OLIVER teaches creative writing in the Fine Arts Department of St. John's College in Annapolis, and has published numerous essays in both regional and national publications. "Ant Farm" is her first published piece of fiction.

RUSSELL BANKS has published thirteen works of fiction, including more recently The Sweet Hereafter, Affliction, and Cloudsplitter. He is interviewed here by Rob Trucks.

PETER LEFCOURT's publications include five novels, most recently The Woody which was published by Simon & Schuster.

JANA MARTIN's nonfiction has been widely published in Marie Claire, Cosmopolitan, and the Village Voice. She's the author of two non-fiction books, and her novel Rubber Days is in progress at this writing. "Hope" is her first published short story and won 1st Place in Glimmer Train's Short-Story Award for New Writers.

LYNNE SHARON SCHWARTZ is an acclaimed novelist, but her recent memoir, Ruined by Reading, has also been warmly welcomed by serious readers. She is interviewed here by Nancy Middleton.

Prize-winning short-story writer LEE MARTIN has been widely published and is the editor of the American Literary Review.

NANCY REISMAN's short stories have also been widely published and have earned her numerous awards. She teaches at the University of Florida in Gainesville.

VICTORIA LANCELOTTA's fiction has appeared in numerous highly regarded journals and has been anthologized in Fiction 2000.

SIOBHAN DOWD has edited several books on behalf of International PEN's Writers-in-Prison Committee.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

From "Ant Farm" by Laura Oliver-Sometimes, I think, it is as if adolescence is a carnival ride Adam wants to get off but can't, and I watch his angry, desperate face fly past me again and again, belted in for the duration.

From Rob Trucks's interview with Russell Banks- But in some ways, you know, an awful lot of the overt aspects of any work of art are telling. They tell us what the artist is insecure about, in a way. What you push in the reader's face is very often what you're least secure about. And as you grow more secure about it, you think about it less and you have less necessity to assert it.

From "The Power Breakfast" by Peter Lefcourt-"I was asked to leave Hollywood." Jesus, you could have knocked me over with a taco. You really had to be pretty far gone to get run out of that town..

From "In My Other Life" by Janet Belding- Let's say I'm a man, in his early sixties, vital enough. I still walk eighteen holes with my son. Not a touch of emphysema-what does one cigarette a day do, and only in the years before my kids were born? No prostate trouble, a full head of then, grey hair. This is true. Let's say it's true.

From "Hope" by Jana Martin- This suitcase was pale blue satin inside, a little moldy, a little crushed. But it still gave off a scent, like lavender and boiled potatoes. Like Irish sisters never married. The name on the tag was written in parlor hand: O'Toole.

From Nancy Middleton's interview with Lynne Sharon Schwartz-I think that reading so early perhaps channeled me into seeing everything verbally. If I had had a few more years of looking at the world without reading, I might have become a different person.

From "Insect Life" by Lee Martin- Betty Hopp was an elementary-education major who liked to pep up her conversation with phrases from Dr. Seuss books. "He's fighting a tweetle-beetle battle," she had said, and Miss Casey had noted, with a touch of envy, how the young, even when their loved ones were fighting a war, never really believed in loss.

From "Sharks" by Nancy Reisman- Matt chain smokes, opens a beer, pours black beans into a pot of water. He records a cassette of saxophone greats for Alice's car: he's been trying little surprises and gifts, puzzling out what kind of attention she needs.

From "Spice" by Victoria Lancelotta- The thing that my mother was afraid to hear was not that I had slept with him, but that I had left him, because for me to leave him so easily, so quickly, without thought or fear as I had done, meant that I would leave all of them eventually in just the same way.

Edition details

• Publisher: Glimmer Train Press Inc.
• Publication date: 1999
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 188096631X
• ISBN 13: 9781880966310
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 160