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Original Essays | November 5, 2009

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  1. $18.20 Sale Hardcover add to wish list

Desert Gothic (Iowa Short Fiction Award)

by Don Waters

Desert Gothic (Iowa Short Fiction Award) Cover

ISBN13: 9781587296246
ISBN10: 1587296241
All Product Details

Only 2 left in stock at $16.00!

Synopses & Reviews

Publisher Comments:

This powerful debut collection, set in the light-filled deserts of Nevada and Arizona, introduces a darkly inventive new voice. Like an early Richard Ford, Don Waters writes with skill, empathy, and an edgy wit of worlds not often celebrated in contemporary literature. In Desert Gothic, Waters unleashes a wild and gritty cast and points them down paths of reckoning, where the characters earn the grace of their hard-won wisdom.

     Set in bars, mortuaries, nursing homes, truck stops, and the “poverty motels that encircled downtown’s casino corridor,” Waters’s ten stories are full of misfit transients like Julian, a crematorium worker who decorates abandoned urns to create a “lush underground island,” and the instant Mormon missionary Eli, a hapless divorcé who “always likes people better when they’re a little broken.” Limo drivers, ultra-marathoners, vagabonds, and a distraught novelist-to-be populate the pages of these gritty stories.

Synopsis:

This powerful debut collection, set in the light-filled deserts of Nevada and Arizona, introduces a darkly inventive new voice. Like an early Richard Ford, Don Waters writes with skill, empathy, and an edgy wit of worlds not often celebrated in contemporary literature. Set in bars, mortuaries, nursing homes, truck stops, and the "poverty motels that encircled downtown's casino corridor, " Waters's ten stories are full of misfit transients like Julian, a crematorium worker who decorates abandoned urns to create a "lush underground island, " and the instant Mormon missionary Eli, a hapless divorce who "always likes people better when they're a little broken."

About the Author

Don Waters was born and raised in Reno, Nevada, and now lives in Berkeley, California. He’s received numerous honors for his writing, including fellowships from the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts and the Jentel Foundation, as well as the McGinnis-Ritchie Award from the Southwest Review. His stories have been published in such venues as Epoch, StoryQuarterly, the Kenyon Review, the Southwest Review, the Santa Monica Review, zyzzyva, the Cimarron Review, and Grain.

Product Details

ISBN:
9781587296246
Author:
Waters, Don
Publisher:
University of Iowa Press
Subject:
Short Stories (single author)
Subject:
Stories (single author)
Edition Number:
1
Edition Description:
Paperback
Series:
Iowa Short Fiction Award
Publication Date:
September 2007
Binding:
Paperback
Language:
English
Pages:
152
Dimensions:
9.15x5.70x.50 in. .55 lbs.

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