Synopses & Reviews
Synopsis
Missing Persons by Stephanie Carpenter won the 2017 Press 53 Award for Short Fiction. These ten stories, all of which were published in literary journals including Crab Orcahrd Review, Nimrod International Journal, and The Missouri Review, offer readers a glimpse into the lives of ordinary people facing out-of-the-ordinary problems--street sweepers sending incomplete messages that a young couple is compelled to decipher; a young woman travels back home with her boyfriend to help him sort through the lives of his deceased parents; a woman smitten with a living-statue artist; and a man finding himself with an unwanted house guest he met through a dating app. "These stories," says Jim Shepard, author of The Book of Aron and The World to Come, "are piercingly smart on how unsettling our everyday intimacies can be, and heartening in their faith in our responsibility to always make sure that we've nevertheless done what we could." A native of northern Michigan, Stephanie Carpenter holds an MFA from Syracuse University and a PhD in Creative Writing and American Literature from the University of Missouri. Widely published in literary magazines and journals, Missing Persons is her debut story collection.
Synopsis
Missing Persons is the winner of the 2017 Press 53 Prize in Short Fiction. Employing a dazzling range of styles and subject matters, the collection's ten stories offer glimpses into the lives of ordinary people facing out-of-the-ordinary problems. A street sweeper sends coded messages that a young couple is compelled to decipher. A woman becomes smitten with a living statue. A divorced dad finds himself with an unwanted house guest, after his online date goes wrong. Including speculative, historical, contemporary, and flash pieces, the collection grapples in surprising and illuminating ways with themes of disappearance and loss.