Glimmer Train Interview

An anthology of new short fiction by award-winning and emerging authors, this intimate collection celebrates writing and honors the writer. The editors-two sisters from Oregon-choose stories that are beautifully written, readable, and emotionally affecting. Each collection is also visually satisfying with handsome cover art and story illustrations, and unusual author profiles. Excerpts can be found at glimmertrain.com, but please place your orders here with Amazon.

GERARD VARNI earned an MA in English from Loyola Marymount University where he also earned a degree in philosophy. As he says, this is the first time his work has appeared “in one of the big guns.” We’ll be hearing more from Mr. Varni.

TIFFANY DREVER received both her PhD in English literature and her MFA from the University of California at Irvine. “Lesser Waterways” is her first published fiction.

AARON COHEN was born in Aberdeen, MD, and was raised in Texas, Missouri, Utah, and Florida. His fiction has appeared in Quarterly West and 25 & Under. He is at work on his first novel.

CHARLES BAXTER’s work is regularly anthologized and has won countless prestigious awards. His books include these: A Relative Stranger, Through the Safety Net, Believers, Harmony of the World, Shadow Play, First Light, The Feast of Love, and Burning Down the House, his collection of essays on fiction. He teaches at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor.

PAUL RAWLINS’s fiction has appeared in Sycamore Review, Prism International, Paris Transcontinental, and other journals, and has won numerous awards including the Flannery O’Connor Award for his collection, No Lie Like Love.

SERGIO GABRIEL WAISMAN received an MA in creative writing from the University of Colorado, Boulder, and is completing his PhD in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese at the University of California, Berkeley. His translations have won many awards, and his own fiction and poetry have appeared in Hanging Loose, TAMAQUA, ACM (Another Chicago Magazine), Santa Clara Review, and others. His upcoming novel is entitled Leaving.

ANN PANCAKE, another award-winning writer, has been published in Virginia Quarterly, Shenandoah, Massachusetts Review and other journals. Her short-story collection, Given Ground, will be published shortly. She teaches creative writing and literature at Penn State, Erie.

SIOBHAN DOWD of International PEN’s Writers-in-Prison Committee in London writes this column regularly, alerting readers to the plight of writers around the world who deserve our awareness and our writing action.

U PA PA LAY and U LU ZAW, cousins from Burma (also known as Myanmar), and comedians who travel the countryside of Burma, have been jailed since 1996 for poking fun at the government.

RANDOLPH THOMAS earned his MFA in poetry from the University of Arkansas. His work has appeared in the Hudson Review, Press, Poetry, Poetry Northwest, the Literary Review, Quarterly West, Witness, and Louisiana Literature. He has taught at the University of Arkansas, New River Community College, and James Madison University in Harrisonburg, Virginia.

RITA D. COSTELLO won our October Poetry Open for her poem “shadow trees.” She has earned her BFA in creative writing from Bowling Green State University in Ohio, her MFA from Wichita State University in Kansas, and is working on her PhD from the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, where she teaches composition, literature, and creative writing.

MARK RADER is just twenty-four years old and this is his first published story, as he says, “not counting ‘I, Little Runner, the Hero,’ the story of a one-armed cave boy who saves his clan from a bear, which appeared in a kids’ magazine in the eighties.” He earned his bachelor’s degree from Tulane University in New Orleans, and he’s currently a graduate student in creative writing at Cornell University.