This Impossible Vertical World Format: Trade Paperback

In the stories of This Impossible Vertical World, characters struggle to hold fast to other lives—human and animal—as the familiar deserts them. In threatened geographies, from New Mexico and Alaska to Utah and Minnesota, these hard-tested people discover a bestiary of relations: dogs, coyotes, rattlers, whales, swans, wolves, bears, loons, and turtles. This is an ark of stories, its passengers hoping events flooding their lives will recede on a more habitable vertical world.

Stephen Pett is author of Sirens, a novel, and Pulpit of Bones, poetry. His short stories have appeared in many venues, including, Ecotone Cimarron Review, Missouri Review, North American Review, Southern Humanities Review, The Sun, and, Witness. He co-founded and was Coordinator for Iowa State University's MFA Program in Creative Writing and Environment and founded the journal Flyway. He lives half the year in Santa Fe and half alongside the Boundary Waters Wilderness in Minnesota.