Join us Wed., Apr. 4, 5 pm as Malinda McCollum will be here to talk about her new short story collection The Surprising Place (UMass Press, pb., 224 pp., $20).
In The Surprising Place, people adrift in the American Midwest struggle to find their way with few signposts for guidance. A synchronized swimming coach pops pills during practice, a bagpiper cold-cocks a hawk, and an orphan puts her fist through a window, discovering in the engine noise of a jet passing overhead, the perfect witness to her inner pain. In prose as lean and unflinching as an Iowa winter, these stories offer confrontation and consolation in equal measure.
Malinda McCollum’s stories have appeared in The Paris Review–which awarded her the Plimpton Prize–McSweeney’s, ZYZZYVA, Epoch, and elsewhere. She has been the recipient of a Pushcart Prize and a Stegner Fellowship at Stanford University. She is a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and has taught at the University of Iowa, Johns Hopkins University, and Stanford University. She grew up in Des Moines, Iowa, and now lives with her family in Charleston, where she teaches writing at the College of Charleston.
Post a Comment