Glimmer Train Stories, #73 - Softcover

Nellie Hermann; K.L. Cook; Abby Geni; Stefanie Freele; Nancy Reisman; Matthew Mercier; Louis Gallo; Michael Schiavone; Dana Kinstler; Sara Whyatt; Lucrecia Guerrero (interviewer)

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1595530223 ISBN 13: 9781595530226

Publisher: Glimmer Train Press, Inc., 2009

Synopsis

Literary short stories by established and emerging writers.

Excerpts:

Nellie Hermann
Can We Let the Baby Go?
Life was confusing and strange and unpredictable, and here, the two of them joined in holy matrimony under this tree in Virginia, here was the proof that we could never comprehend it.

K.L. Cook
Bonnie and Clyde in the Backyard
That was how we passed the fall and then winter and then most of the next spring, watching my father and his cousin continue to elude the forces determined to kill them off.

Abby Geni
Captivity
At the age of thirty-one, I moved in with my mother. This was not entirely my fault.

Matthew Mercier
Valentine Ave.
Whole families, up past midnight, on a summer evening. Martin loved it. He eased his way through the happy crowd, spotted a few familiar faces, and, if the faces noticed him, gave a small grin or quick nod. All his customers. He knew hundreds of faces, zero names.

Stefanie Freele
Us Hungarians
Steyr double-locked the door behind them. "If only Mom and Dad would understand that just because a Hungarian relative recommends a Hungarian to rent from, it doesn't mean they're not crazy."

Louis Gallo
S-O-S
You hone the cornucopia down to a few trusty stand-bys--a good cup of green tea, a bowl of strawberries, Progresso lentil soup, White Rain shampoo from Dollar General and chuck the rest, the entire amazing array.

Nancy Reisman
Ear to the Door
The door seems less than solid, flimsy enough to punch through. The wood might not even be wood, and isn't that the way lately? Things not quite themselves?

Michael Schiavone
No One Comes Up Here by Accident
I'll explain how real criminals prefer to sneak up on you, catch you while you're sleeping, and that these guys are too loud, obvious, with their headlights and beer bottles. They're as scared of us as we are of them, I'll tell her. This isn't how these things go.

K.L. Cook
Interview by Lucrecia Guerrero
I read Eugene O'Neill's masterpiece, Long Day's Journey Into Night, when I was seventeen, and was transformed. I didn't know that you could write in such a nakedly vulnerable way about family.

Dana Kinstler
Eclipse
Sophie couldn't tell him that her mother didn't let her go east of First Avenue. Rumors circulated about the Alphabets. The poor throw garbage down at you, one friend said, like the Middle Ages.

About this title

About the Author:

Nellie Hermann grew up in Boston, Massachusetts, and is a graduate of Brown University and the MFA program at Columbia University. Her first novel, The Cure for Grief, was published in 2008 by Scribner. It received a starred review from Kirkus, and has garnered national attention in such publications as Time, Elle, the New York Times, and others. She lives in Brooklyn, New York.

K.L. Cook is the author of two books: Last Call, a collection of linked stories that won the Prairie Schooner Book Prize in Fiction; and The Girl from Charnelle, a novel that won the 2007 Willa Award for Contemporary Fiction. His stories and essays have appeared in many journals, magazines, and anthologies, including Glimmer Train, Poets & Writers, Threepenny Review, Shenandoah, Witness, and American Short Fiction. Cook lives in Arizona with his wife, playwright Charissa Menefee, and their four children. He teaches at Prescott College and Spalding University.

Abby Geni is a graduate of the Iowa Writers' Workshop and a recipient of the Iowa Fellowship. She lives in Washington, D.C., where she is gathering together a collection of short stories. "Captivity" is her first published story.

Stefanie Freele is the 2008 Kathy Fish Fellowship Writer-in-Residence for Smoke-Long Quarterly. She has an MFA from the Northwest Institute of Literary Arts: Whidbey Writers Workshop. Recent work has appeared or is forthcoming in American Literary Review, Talking River, Literary Mama, McSweeney's Internet Tendency, FRiGG, Flash Fiction Online, and Hobart. SmokeLong Quarterly has recently added Stefanie to their editorial staff.

Nancy Reisman is the author of the novel The First Desire and the story collection House Fires. Her stories have appeared in numerous journals and anthologies, including the 2005 O. Henry Award Stories, The Best American Short Stories 2001, and Glimmer Train's Mother Knows: 24 Tales of Motherhood. She now lives in Nashville, Tennessee and teaches at Vanderbilt University.

Matthew Mercier worked as a hostel manager, fish packer, and caretaker of the Edgar Allan Poe Cottage before studying writing at Hunter College, where he was the recipient of both the Bernard Cohen Short-Story Prize and a Hertog Fellowship. He now teaches literature at Hunter to students from all five boroughs. His work has appeared in the Mississippi Review, Glimpse Magazine, the Brooklyn Rail, and various other publications. He is also a regular performer at The Moth, an oral-storytelling venue in New York City.

Louis Gallo was born and raised in New Orleans. He now teaches at Radford University in Virginia. Recent stories have appeared in The Ledge, The Journal, the Texas Review, Portland Review, and about a dozen or so pieces on Amazon.com's Amazon Shorts, including two children's books and a chapter from a book on his family's ordeal during Katrina.

Michael Schiavone's fiction has appeared in numerous literary journals and recognized by dozens of award programs. He lives in Gloucester, Massachusetts with his wife and four dogs. He's just finished his first novel, Call Me When You Land.

Dana Kinstler's fiction won the Gulf Coast fiction prize, Southern Indiana Review's Mary C. Mohr Fiction Prize, and the Missouri Review Editor's Prize, and has been published in Salamander and the Mississippi Review. Her essays have appeared or are forthcoming in Stella Magazine/Sunday London Telegraph and the anthologies My Father Married Your Mother, Mr. Wrong, About Face, and Feed Me. She is a graduate of Brown University and the Bennington College Writing Seminars.

About this edition

• Publisher: Glimmer Train Press, Inc.
• Publication date: 2009
• ISBN 10: 1595530223
• ISBN 13: 9781595530226
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 220
• Editor: Susan Burmeister-Brown, Linda B. Swanson-Davies
• Illustrator: Cover By Jane Zwinger