Cutting-edge fiction that breathes life into unlikely characters
In these 14 stories, William Luvaas weaves magic and absurdity around characters caught between apocalypse and heartbreak. A Working Man's Apocrypha conveys the joys and misfortunes of characters tested by trauma or loss, who regularly find unexpected opportunities for survival.
Nature has gone mad in stories like "Yesterday After the Storm," wherein a tornado whirls away a man's wife and daughter, Big and Little Lilly, and all hell breaks loose when they return midway into his ensuing love affair with Little Lilly's former schoolteacher. "Season of Limb Fall" "rides the whirlwind," as Blackbird editor Mary Flynn suggests. Odd and ominous windfalls remain in the wake of a malevolent storm, and survivors are left to puzzle out what they mean to their lives. Flood waters cover all but the tops of the California Coast Range in "Rain." Survivors huddle about black bones of their fires, fearing ravenous wild pigs in surrounding redwoods. Some build makeshift arks, anticipating the world's watery end, hoping to follow "The Messenger" to some new Ararat. After her diabetic handyman's suicide in the collection's title story, "A Working Man's Apocrypha," Louise finds John Sylvio's haunting, nearly illiterate diary which documents his unrequited love for her, and she is ambushed by love and loss. A son reconciles with his disapproving father who is fading into Alzheimer's in "To The Death." Lizzie, in "The Woman Who Was Allergic To Herself," confronts the death of her self-esteem and her marriage and heals herself from the ravages of an auto-immune disorder by writing a fairy tale. Twins Holly and Howard are surprised by the demise of their childhood intimacy in "The Sexual Revolution," after adolescent hormones kick in and they can no longer read each others' thoughts.
Common to all of these tales is a sense of something longed for...just out of reach. Inexplicable and wondrous forces are at work behind human fate. Characters are tested, often in unexpected ways, and generally arrive at some epiphany about themselves and the world they inhabit.
PRIZES WON:
- Awarded a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in Fiction based on the Title story
"A Working Man's Apocrypha"
- Nominated for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize
- A film of Luvaas' story "A Working Man's Apocrypha," directed and produced by Lucinda
Luvaas, was awarded Best Short Feature at Delta International Film Festival (spring 2006)
- Season of Limb Fall" and "To The Death" were nominated for the Pushcart Prize
"Luvaas's poetic prose is magic, his story "Rain" drew me immediately in, before the first drop fell, and then it held me captive to the chilling end. This is writing at its best!"
- Virginia Howard, Editor of Thema
"Luvaas manages to make such swerving and impossible lives feel utterly true and real and maybe-incredibly-even normal.
- Linda Swanson-Davies, Co-Editor Glimmer Train
"William Luvaas shows a sophistication and honesty in his writing that is both rare and engaging. His work tracks beneath the glamour and the grit of his characters' lives to arrive at fresh destinations of perception."
- Martin Tucker, Editor of Confrontation
"The Story's power comes from the rigor of the incisive images and the powerful braided structure of two voices overlapping one another...You are gripped by the searing journey through human minds and hearts."
- Meredith Sue Wills, Author and Editor of Epiphany (commenting on "To The Death")
William Luvaas has published two novels, The Seductions of Natalie Bach (Little, Brown) and Going Under (Putnam), and two story collections: A Working Man's Apocrypha and Ashes Rain Down: A Story Cycle-Huffington Post's 2013 Book of the Year and a finalist for The Next Generation Indie Book Awards (Short Story)--and has edited an anthology of California writers: Into The Deep End. He has received fellowships from The National Endowment for the Arts, the Ludwig Vogelstein and Edward Albee foundations, and has won Glimmer Train's Fiction Open Contest, The Ledge Magazine's Fiction Competition, and Fiction Network's 2nd National Fiction Competition. His articles, essays and over 50 stories have appeared widely, including in American Fiction, Antioch Review, Glimmer Train, North American Review, Short Story, The Sun, The Village Voice & The Washington Post Book World. Ten of his stories have been nominated for The Pushcart Prize. Going Under was nominated for the National Book Critics Circle Award, and A Working Man's Apocrypha was nominated for the 2008 Los Angeles Times Book Prize. He is online fiction editor for Cutthroat: A Journal of the Arts.
Luvaas's novels and stories focus on people coping with adversity under difficult circumstances. An apocalyptic wind often blows through his work. Glimmer Train Co-editor, Linda Swanson-Davies, says of his characters: "He manages to make such swerving and impossible lives feel utterly true...even normal."
Luvaas graduated cum laude from the University of California, Berkeley, and has an MFA in Creative Writing from San Diego State University. He was the first VISTA Volunteer in Alabama, working for civil rights and economic justice. He has taught creative writing at San Diego State University, U.C.-Riverside, and The Writer's Voice in New York. He has worked as a carpenter, pipe maker, freelance journalist, and Fiction Coordinator for New York State Poets in Public Service.
