THE TRUTH ABOUT ME: STORIES is the fiction debut of extraordinary stories by New York writer Louise Marburg, in which shortcomings, secrets, and inventions turn notions of love and self upside down. No matter what their station in life, the characters in these wry and moving stories face moments in which the shock of being and becoming comes from within. Of Marburg's work, acclaimed short story writer Richard Bausch says her "characters go through the shifts and sunderings of life in vivid and lyrically direct prose, and your blood jumps." Antonya Nelson writes "[the] author's capacious heart has room for a vast array of very different characters, each of whom receives the fully serious respect and sympathy in the telling of his or her story. In this way, every reader can find 'me' here, not to mention truth." "These are smart and lovely stories, perceptive, compassionate, and sometimes shocking. Who are these people, so helpless in the currents that surround them? Marburg reveals their cowardice, their flaws, and their deep capacities to engage the heart," says author Roxana Robinson.

The Truth About Me: Stories

Literature & Fiction

Marburg, Louise

United States

WTAW Press

Literary Nonfiction. Essays. A moving nonfiction debut by Mississippi Delta poet Mike Smith, this memoir-in-essays, AND THERE WAS EVENING AND THERE WAS MORNING: ESSAYS ON ILLNESS, LOSS, AND LOVE, documents the strange parallels between the illness of the author's first wife and his stepdaughter's similar battle the year his second marriage began, examining blended families, remarriage, grief, and the influence of spirituality upon loss. Tony D'Souza calls Smith "a reflective and precise writer, [who] invites us to walk each step with him as his heart is annihilated." Beth Ann Fennelly, author of Heating &amp; Cooling, says, "What a gift Mike Smith has given us... His prose is nuanced, his voice considered and considerate, his wisdom hard-earned but never bitter. There is beauty and solace here and gorgeous imagery. Smith has written a book for all of us who are dying--which is to say, all of us who are living, and our lives will be the better for having read it." Julianna Baggott's writes: "What I love most is that this isn't a book about learning to let go but instead learning that the heart can expand to hold more love..."

And There Was Evening and There Was Morning: Essays on Illness, Loss, and Love

SMITH, MIKE

Parenting & Relationships

Fiction. Hybrid Genre. Foreword Reviews 2017 Indies Finalist for Literary (Adult Fiction). Finalist and Honorable Mention in Fiction for the First Horizon Award. In this striking debut, of vivid characters and piercing situations, nothing is too insignificant for Pursell's imagination--a wren on a branch, a hole in a sock, ginger tea--and nothing too dangerous--a girl hit by a stone, a mother and daughter struggling, a lip plump with blood. Intense insights are captured in superb concentrations of prose, with lyricism and flashes of brilliant detail applied to the small wonders of the world. In a matter of a few words, a few lines resonant as in the way of music, Pursell transports us. This dazzling collection of narratives, with its precise beauty and unsparing wisdom, is a fiercely sacred book, immense in its gifts, with a long, shimmering after-effect. SHOW HER A FLOWER, A BIRD, A SHADOW has received praise from Margot Livesey, Joan Silber, Peter Orner, Glen David Gold, Antonya Nelson, Melissa Pritchard, Tom Barbash, and Molly Giles. Second edition.

Show Her A Flower, A Bird, A Shadow

Pursell, Peg Alford

An inventive, funny, sometimes heart-breaking exploration of the connections between art and hunger, duty and desire, and loss and survival. Brother and sister Robert and Julia Zamarin are trying to awaken the world to its peril with their tiny political theater company, while their sister Eva, a neuroscientist, searches for the biological roots of empathy. As Julia attempts to break free of Robert's influence, Robert, as lost without her as she is without him, takes on dark material and drives away members of their company. Meanwhile, the whole family contends with the ongoing troubles of Eva's youngest daughter, Arielle, as she struggles with addiction. Finally, after a family catastrophe, Julia and Robert reunite to create a new piece in a possibly haunted theater institute. When Arielle shows up after her latest relapse, they all have to find a new way of living in--and with--a world out of balance. The adventures of the eccentric, memorable Zamarin family take the reader from San Francisco to Seoul, from theater spaces to psychiatric hospitals, from Zanzibar to the Santa Cruz Mountains, and into and through a series of Sumerian and Tibetan hells. This imaginative, provocative novel is a contemporary Inferno for fans of Margaret Atwood, Ruth Ozeki, and Lydia Millet. "Sarah Stone traces out the quirky, fateful dramas of one family, while having the visionary originality to take the longest possible view of human action. I found this an unforgettable book, astute, vivid, and stubbornly ambitious in its scope." --Joan Silber "With her laser intelligence and gorgeous prose style, Sarah Stone has written a thrilling hybrid of a novel about the intricacies of family life and the inevitable handing down from one generation to the next of our deepest passions and pathologies. Set around the world--and in the next one--this book is both marvelously inventive and deeply humane. I loved it."--Ann Packer

Hungry Ghost Theater: A Novel

Stone, Sarah

Literary

Fiction. Short Stories. This collection of seven connected stories set in the Ozarks explores the relationships between people and place and the changing culture of rural America. From a newly divorced woman employed by a front for illegal drugs, to a man who seeks revenge when the farm he loves is invaded by meth producers, to a shady Arkansas businessman wrestling with his own wildness (and that of his teen son) as he attempts to return a domesticated bobcat to its native habitat, the characters in UNNATURAL HABITATS AND OTHER STORIES explore the conflict between what is instinct and what is learned, as well as what it means to belong to a place and to a people. Set in the rural landscape of the Ozarks of Arkansas and Missouri, the stories turn on a growing crime culture in a place that had previously felt untouched by the world outside, forcing characters who live there to reevaluate their sense of right and wrong. "Don't start any of the stories in UNNATURAL HABITATS if you're in a hurry, because once you've read that first sentence, you will be hooked and unable to do anything else until you get to the end. This is an exciting debut by a young writer with loads of talent and plenty of heart. Highly recommended."--Steve Yarbrough

Unnatural Habitats & Other Stories

Mitchell, Angela

Fiction. California Interest. Short Stories. With settings that range from the Cuban Missile Crisis and Soviet-era Perestroika to present-day San Francisco, LIKE WATER AND OTHER STORIES, the first English-language collection from Leningrad-born author Olga Zilberbourg, looks at family and childrearing in ways both unsettling and tender, and characters who grapple with complicated legacies--of state, parentage, displacement, and identity. LIKE WATER is a unique portrayal of motherhood, of immigration and adaptation, and an inside account of life in the Soviet Union and its dissolution. Zilberbourg's stories investigate how motherhood reshapes the sense of self--and in ways that are often bewildering--against an uncharted landscape of American culture. In "Dandelion," a child turns into a novel and is shipped off to an agent in New York. In "Doctor Sveta," a young Soviet woman finds herself on a ship bound for Cuba at the onset of the Cuban Missile Crisis. In "Companionship," a young boy decides to return to his mother's uterus. Anthony Marra calls LIKE WATER "A book of succinct abundance, dazzling in its particulars, expansive in its scope," and of these stories, Karen E. Bender says, they "cast a clear, illuminating light on topics ranging from motherhood, the workplace, birth, death, ambition, and immigration, all explored through exquisitely wrought characters in Russia and the United States. Olga Zilberbourg is a writer to read right now."

Like Water and Other Stories

Zilberbourg, Olga

Fiction. California Interest. Down-and-out Tamil American trial lawyer Maya Ramesh fights to save a painted lemur come to life, and in settings that range from Oakland, California, to a Malagasy rain forest, becomes a champion for them both. In magical realist tradition Anita Felicelli's satiric novel, CHIMERICA, looks at the inherent absurdities that drive systems of culture, power, and law. Fans of Marquez, Kelly Link, and Helen Oyeyemi will find CHIMERICA a spirited investigation of the ways in which art is codified and commodified--a contemporary philosophical, non-ideological, novel about art, originality, and American culture. "Felicelli's remarkable CHIMERICA is a coolly surrealist legal thriller--in turns sly, absurd, emotionally vivid, and satirically incisive--that shifts the reader into a world just adjacent to our own."--Jonathan Lethem "Felicelli blends the matter-of-fact with the mysterious in this utterly unique and compellingly readable debut. CHIMERICA is more than the story of a woman coming into her own power; it's a keen dive into the worlds of law, visual art, and marriage. You really couldn't ask for a novel with better ingredients. Did I mention there's a talking lemur? THERE'S A TALKING LEMUR."--Kelly Luce

Chimerica: A Novel

Felicelli, Anita

Fiction. Based loosely on a tragic real-life incident in 2014; ONE KIND FAVOR explores the consequences of the lynching of a young black man in rural North Carolina. After the lynching of Lincoln Lennox is discovered and subsequently covered up in the small fictional community of Cord; North Carolina; the ghosts who frequent the all-in-one bar and consignment shop take on the responsibility of unearthing the truth and acting as the memory for the town that longs to forget and continues to hate. A reimagined Kathy Acker; the groundbreaking literary icon; engages Lincoln in a love triangle and brings a transgressive post-punk esthetic to the mission. The down-the-rabbit-hole satirical storytelling of ONE KIND FAVOR; Kevin McIlvoy's sixth novel; echoes Appalachian ghost stories in which haunting presences will; at last; have their way. "In ONE KIND FAVOR; Kevin McIlvoy crafts a novel we haven't seen before: a rare book about race and place that offers a nuanced take on the world we live in. This book feels vital for our times."--Nina McConigley "I describe Cord as 'spirit-haunted;' but is any place in America not haunted by ancestral misdeeds?"--Rion Scott Amilcar

One Kind Favor: A Novel

McIlvoy, Kevin

Fiction. LGBTQIA Studies. THE GROUNDHOG FOREVER, Henry Hoke's debut novel, shadows two film students in early-millennial Manhattan as they become stuck in the vicious sequel to a cherished movie. What follows is a high-concept novel of queer friendship, celebrity worship, and artistic immortality. Today is the last day of the best of your life. Kimberly King Parsons, author of Black Light, says of THE GROUNDHOG FOREVER, "In playful, exhilarating prose, Hoke pushes sentential limits, wryly examining the way art marks the world (and the many ways in which it fails to do so.)" Speed Levitch, author of Speedology says, "A gorgeous love letter to reality's unfolding, this beautifully written, magically real adventure paints a lucid, abstract-expressionistic kind-of-a-sensation of being limitless even while standing under the fluorescent lights of the institution."

The Groundhog Forever: A Novel

Hoke, Henry

New fiction from Midwestern writer Keith Pilapil Lesmeister. When Joe Patterson arrives in a rural upper Midwestern river town in order to fix up and sell his late father's "cabin," a host of issues for which he's not prepared confront him: the house is in shambles, his body aches, his checking account is almost empty, and he meets a twelve-year-old boy in need of help. A story of hope, loss, and redemption, Mississippi River Museum explores the unlikely friendship between two orphans who bond over fishing, bikes, and eating fried catfish. "Mississippi River Museum is a gut punch of an American story, set in a corner of northeast Iowa that simmers with menace and a slow-moving beauty. Its hero, Joe Patterson, breaks the mold of the usual rural archetypes: he's biracial, full of heart, and aching, though he doesn't know it, for a family of his own. Keith Pilapil Lesmeister's chapbook is an instant classic."--Benjamin Anastas, author of Too Good to Be True: a memoir "In his Mississippi River Museum, Keith Pilapil Leismester has created Joe Patterson: a compelling character who struggles with his sense of self and place; struggles with a past that meanders menacingly like an almost still river through his blood; struggles with those stories we all carry inside to protect ourselves from admitting the truth. There's a desperate beauty to Joe's searching story, his almost quiet and tender loss, confusion, and rage. His heart is big, his vision steadily moving towards clarity. Keith Pilapil Leismester composes glimpses into the racism and violence Joe faces, as he begins to care, change, and act to make the most of his 'work-in-progress' life. In this unique and necessary region along the upper Mississippi, Keith Leismester has composed a powerful and beautiful fiction."--Fred Arroyo, author of Sown in Earth: Essays of Memory and Belonging "In Mississippi River Museum, Keith Pilapil Lesmeister works his slow and assured magic, reeling the reader in like one of the sunnies Joe Patterson tries to catch in the story. Each surprise comes as a flash breaking the surface of the clean, fluid prose. This is an arresting and redemptive tale about a young man and a boy, about generations of hurt being handed down. Lesmeister depicts the upper Midwest like no other author I know, refusing to turn away from its ugliness--or its devastating environmental beauty. On the merit of this story alone, I'd read anything Keith Pilapil Lesmeister writes."--Rachel Swearington, author of How to Walk on Water and Other Stories "Mississippi River Museum is Keith Pilapil Lesmeister's masterclass in patient interiority and how to finesse nuanced storytelling out of ache, river silt, and catfish scales. Don't miss out on one of the finest midwestern writers at work."--Ron Austin, author of Avery Colt is a Snake, a Thief, a Liar Fiction.

Mississippi River Museum

Pilapil Lesmeister, Keith

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