Glimmer Train Stories, #42 - Softcover

Burmeister-Brown, Susan; Swanson-Davies, Linda; Wood, Monica; Carroll, H. G.; Ferguson Jr., J. M.; Taylor, Lois; Melis, Amalia; Chibka, Robert; Slattery, Brian; Barkley, Brad; Haruf, Kent; Bekdil, Baruk; Nashold, Jim; Dowd, Siobhan

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1880966417 ISBN 13: 9781880966419

Publisher: Glimmer Train Press Inc, 2002

Synopsis

Gorgeous short stories by established and emerging fiction writers. This issue includes the winners of Glimmer Train's 2001 Fiction Open and Very Short Fiction Award.

About this title

About the Author

MONICA WOOD’s most recent novel is My Only Story. Ernie’s Ark, due out this spring, is a book of linked stories whose title story won a Pushcart Prize after appearing in Glimmer Train. “That One Autumn” is part of the collection. Two other books will appear this spring: The Pocket Muse: Ideas and Inspirations for Writers, and a paperback edition of her first novel, Secret Language.

KENT HARUF’s work includes The Tie that Binds, Where You Once Belonged, and Plainsong.

H. G. CARROLL lives and teaches in Ithaca, New York, where he is an MFA/PhD candidate in the department of English at Cornell University. He is currently completing his first novel.

A former traveling salesman but now mostly retired, J. M. FERGUSON, JR. lives in Tigard, Oregon, with his wife Holly, a former astrogeologist, and their good friend Dilsey, mostly beagle. The Summerfield Stories was a first collection from TCU Press in 1985, and a second collection has been looking for a publisher.

LOIS TAYLOR was born in Vancouver, British Columbia. She completed her master’s degree in literature at the University of Washington, and has taught, worked in a city jail as a “personal recognizance” interviewer, served as a probation counselor, and taken ads over the phone for a newspaper classified-advertising department. She has published a chapbook of poems, Learning to Swim, and had poems and stories appear in the Nation, the New York Quarterly, Mid-American Review, the Yale Review, Northwest Review, American Short Fiction, and others. She also won an Associated Writing Program award, and a national award for a short story. She has two as yet unpublished novels seeking publication, Trouble Breathing, and About Time.

AMALIA MELIS lives in Athens, Greece. She still misses New York when she’s in Greece and misses Greece when she’s in New York. She’s finally realized there is no cure for this condition, so she might as well write about it. She works as a journalist for magazines and newspapers. She worked with Peter Gabriel when he filmed his concert in Athens for “Point of View,” and chases down drug traffickers, artists, and anyone else who strikes her fancy for interviews. She also listens, as often as she can, to squeaky violins playing the balo on the island of Andros. She has an MA from the New School for Social Research in New York.

ROBERT CHIBKA’s first car, a nameless 1973 Dodge Dart, died in late middle age of ferroporosis as a result of elemental exposure. His first novel, a 1990 Norton called A Slight Lapse, succumbed, much younger, to underexposure and thickening of the prose. Chibka, whose “Thrift” appeared in Glimmer Train 31, lives in Boston.

BRIAN SLATTERY was raised in Upstate New York and now lives in New York City. He is twenty-six years old; this is his first published story.

BRAD BARKLEY is the author of a short-story collection entitled Circle View, and a novel, Money, Love, published by Norton in July of 2000. His stories have appeared in Glimmer Train, the Oxford American, the Southern Review, the Georgia Review, and the Virginia Quarterly Review, which awarded him the Balch Prize for best fiction. He has won writing fellowships from the Maryland State Arts Council and the National Endowment for the Arts.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Brad Barkley “Another Perfect Catastrophe” I looked at him as if seeing him there would there would tell me that nothing this wrong could possibly be happening. His eyes held me, his mouth open and words splitting out of him as I moved toward the winch to hit the shutoff, and saw the cable pull slowly through his jeans just above his knee.

J. M. Ferguson, Jr. “Gleanings” Sensing that he must belong to the small western city he walks, they will sometimes ask him for directions, which he is always pleased to give. A former salesman who once traveled widely, and yet a loner all his life, he asks nothing more of his remaining years than peace and quiet; but even when both elude him, he finds he can still take heart in the smallest gestures of goodwill and civility.

Lois Taylor “Big Moves” That’s where it started for me. Stony is an amateur musician and he liked the pitch of my voice, which in my whole life I’d never given a thought to. You know how it is when someone compliments a quality you didn’t know you had?

Brian Slattery “The Things That Get You” The picture was taken in Venezuela a few kilometers from the Brazilian border. They were faking their smiles because, after two weeks and twenty-six cases, eighteen terminal, the disease they were investigating still mystified them, and Roger looked so fatigued because, in a matter of days, he would exhibit its symptoms.

Amalia Melis “Immigrant Daughter” Everyone takes a journey. Some travel from one end of the globe to the other. Others only move down the road to take on a husband and keep a life no different than the one they have always had. Others travel and can never find a home except in specific moments.

H. G. Carroll “Leche” Alicia knows the story. She knows all of the stories: the tio with the coffee finca who had one arm and more mistresses than socks; or how the recipe that she uses to make picadillo came into the family, and the murder of a diplomat associated with it.

Robert Chibka “Muffler” We—the species—have trodden on moons, transplanted vitals, stored gigabytes on pinheads, and a host of other, equally predictable examples. Can’t we fabricate pipes, whines Baxter inwardly, from rust-proof stuff? How about what they make those mufflers out of?

Kent Haruf Interviewed by Jim Nashold My dad read mostly biographies and history and newspapers. My mom read fiction, and also read us parts of novels when we traveled to my grandparents’ place in South Dakota. My father was a great storyteller, and told stories after dinner.

Monica Wood “That One Autumn” This moment became the turning point—this moment and no other—when two long-married people decided to stay married, to succumb to the shape of the rest of their life, to live with things they would not speak of.

Edition details

• Publisher: Glimmer Train Press Inc
• Publication date: 2002
• ISBN 10: 1880966417
• ISBN 13: 9781880966419
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 196