Cream of Kohlrabi

Fiction. Floyd Skloot's new book gathers sixteen stories that combine unsentimental comedy and forceful emotion. As in his award-winning poetry and memoirs, Skloot's fiction shows how individual people, families, and communities face the starkest of challenges, including bodily maladies, the most harrowing of which often come with aging. Yet alienating experience can lead to moments of powerful intimacy, as dark times are lit by sudden incursions of love and hope, and a yearning for community summons poignant expression. "This is a brave, luminous, searingly unswerving vision of the life that exists so powerfully in those persistent dreams we have for ourselves, good and bad—those secret passions that seem strong enough to survive us, and that endure all the way out to the end of our lives.... These stories are not only brilliant, they are necessary"—Richard Bausch.

"In this breathtaking collection of sixteen intimate stories by award-winning poet, novelist, and memoirist Skloot (The Wink of Zenith), characters struggle with their failing bodies and minds — and the ensuing loss of dignity — while demonstrating their will to live. Skloot's humane approach reveals the truth of each character's condition as well as the challenges of everyday life for the sick and aging — all to haunting and powerful effect. In 'Plans,' a dying man tries to make future plans with his family, especially attending an opening night Mariners vs. Red Sox game in Seattle. In 'The Tour', a mother in a nursing home looks forward to a trip to Fire Island with her daughter and leaves herself small notes in order to jog her memory: 'Had she greeted him? It was too awful, this failure to know what was happening in her life. If you can't remember, Esther thought, you can't think. And if you can't think, you aren't living.' Skloot's subtle, vividly descriptive stories allow his characters glimmers of hope and strength amidst the pain. Readers can't help but be moved. (Sept.)" Publishers Weekly (Starred Review) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

Floyd Skloot was named one of the fifty most inspiring authors in the world by the magazine Poets & Writers, and he has been called the Willie Mays of memoirists by The San Francisco Chronicle. In Skloot's short fiction, people face the starkest challenges, including bodily maladies, the most harrowing of which often come with aging. Gathering stories that originally appeared in excellent journals such as The Virginia Quarterly Review, Ontario Review, North American Review, Glimmer Train, and Witness, this new book by an acclaimed memoirist, novelist and poet shows how bewildering experiences can open to moments of powerful intimacy.

Floyd Skloot is the author of seventeen books, including two volumes of poems from Tupelo Press and the acclaimed memoirs In the Shadow of Memory (2003) and The Wink of the Zenith (2008). The stories in CREAM OF KOHLRABI originally appeared in The Virginia Quarterly Review, Ontario Review, North American Review, Glimmer Train, Witness, and other magazines. He and his wife, the artist Beverly Hallberg, live in Portland, Oregon. With his daughter Rebecca Skloot, he edited Best American Science Writing 2011.