Winner, 2006 George Garrett Fiction Prize
Meg Moceri
Sky Full of Burdens
ISBN: 978-1-933896-09-0 paper
5 1/2 x 8 1/2 pp. 184

Left behind by the hyper-acceleration of a new century are the lives encountered in Sky Full of Burdens.  In one way or another facing extinction or obsolescence, the men and women in these stories could be described as vestigial:  the proprietor of a failing grocery in a town literally about to be erased from the map; a man isolated by a physical handicap who stakes much of his identity to an engineering quirk on a local highway.  Exile from their comfort zones brings them into direct contact with irrevocable mistakes, deferred realizations, and unexpected connections with the humanity and fallibility of others.  The interplay of painful losses and discovered compensations is echoed in the alternately bleak and beautiful landscape of northern Michigan. 

“When you begin a Meg Moceri story, you immediately enter the lives of its characters, and you automatically share their quandaries, hopes, and regrets.  When you reach the end, you feel an ache in your heart that will last for some time.  Her rendering of the flawed souls in these pages is both severe and sympathetic, tragic and, at times, unexpectedly comic.  The author's piercing intelligence is matched by her mastery of the language.  She writes sentences that get directly to the heart of the matter, with phrases so well turned that they make you see afresh the way we sad humans stumble along life's path.”  — David Carkeet

Winner, 2005 George Garrett Fiction Prize (Stories)
Jacqueline Bautista
Fiestas
ISBN: 978-1-881515-95-1 (1-881515-95-8) paper
$16.95
5 1/2 x 8 1/2 pp. 176

If one aspect of their consciousness characterizes the Spanish, it is the prevailing philosophy that life is worth what it does to you. Fiestas is a collection of short stories about modern Spain, beginning with a tale of true love versus romance in the years just before the Spanish Civil War of 1936. The collection takes the reader into the Civil War and Spain's darkest and most wretched times and continues through the twentieth century, with stories of ordinary Spaniards living the fiestas of their lives—the loves, deaths, miseries, and minor triumphs of a people determined to make the most of whatever life can throw at them.

Jacqueline Bautista was born in California and travels between her home there and Madrid, Spain. Fiestas, her first published book, is drawn primarily from the recollections and experiences of family and friends and was the winner of the 2005 George Garrett Prize in Fiction. She has published and won awards for short fiction, poetry, and essays, and worked as a journalist and researcher.

"He is not relating curious anecdotes; he's creating a world. The Buddha in Malibu reminds us once more how truly big William Harrison's talent is."—Dallas Morning News

"Harrison is that rare novelist who can write equally well of action and ideas."—John Leonard, New York Times

"Though the political geography of The Blood Latitudes may seem at times melodramatic Harrison presents it with a voice that is as compelling in its restraint as it is authentic in its details."—Texas Observer

"Harrison is a compelling storyteller with a sure touch."—Kit Reed, Washington Post Book World

"So you think Texas has all calmed down now, becoming more suburbia than wild and wooly frontier? Well, look again. The fully realized and remembered and untamed people, places, and things to be found in the pages of Pitching Tents will have you laughing out loud even as you disabuse yourself of all such stereotypes and easy assumptions. Pitching Tents is proof positive that the tall tale is alive and kicking and the frontier is far from forgotten."—George Garrett, Series Final Judge

"In his new novel, Pitching Tents, author Gail Mount gives us a perceptive look at what hippies do when they age. His read is right-on, his insights discerning. Would you believe that since the Hippie Happening all is not lost? Gail Mount does a good job with Pitching Tents in assuring us continuity of American ethic as we know and prize it. Pitching Tents is a tour-de-force in this regard."—Robert Winship, author of The Brushlanders, Every Man Also, and Flannery's Crossing.

Gail Mount was born in Ft. Worth. The family lived in Rock Crossing, Electra, and Vernon before moving to Houston when Gail was nine. He graduated from Rice University and was a teaching fellow at the University of Texas. Married and the father of two sons, he spent most of his life as a marine and energy insurance broker. Mount's work has appeared in The Texas Observer, The Texas Journal of Ideas, History, and Culture, and The Utne Review. His plays, The Offing and Vicissitudes, had successful readings in Houston theatre, and The Offing had a concert reading in New York in April 2001.

Winner, 2004 George Garrett Fiction Prize (Stories)
Mark Brazaitis
An American Affair
ISBN: 1-881515-77-X paper
$16.95
5 1/2 x 8 1/2 pp. 184

"The dozen short stories of An American Affair give us back a clear and accurate reflection of our own world here and now. Linked togther by geographical setting and the clash of contemporary cultures, they challenge our easy assumptions with complexity. The characters are wholly credible and fully dimensional. The stories they tell are moving and memorable. This is short fiction at its best and brightest."—George Garrett, final judge

"These rich, evocative stories deal with the nuances of truth and inadequacy of language to express or even find truth, even when lying is made more difficult."—Jim Daniels

"Wonderfully anchored in place, the stories of An American Affair are provocative and emotionally honest. A good read." —Patricia Henley

Mark Brazaitis is the author of The River of Lost Voices: Stories from Guatemala, winner of the 1998 Iowa Short Fiction Award, and Steal My Heart, a novel published in 2000. He is a past recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship, and his stories, poems, and essays have appeared in The Sun, Witness, Beloit Fiction Journal, Confrontation, Notre Dame Review, and Shenandoah. He is an assistant professor of English at West Virginia University.

Winner, 2003 George Garrett Fiction Prize (Novel)
Steve Sherwood
Hardwater
ISBN: 1-881515-68-0 paper
$16.95
5 1/2 x 8 1/2 pp. 224

Hoback flees to Wyoming to escape the big city violence that cost him his wife and almost turned him into a killer. Life is good in Hardwater until somebody butchers three people like deer, packs their bodies with uranium ore, and sends Hoback a poem, challenging him to stop the killing. The poet reveals an intimate knowledge of Hoback's violent past—and a perverse and terrifying interest in his son. This haunting tale of murder, betrayal, and a father's love takes place in a Wyoming uranium-mining town set in the middle of the wildest, most beautiful country south of Alaska.

"A worthy winner of the George Garrett Fiction Prize, Hardwater has style, pace and punch. Its picture of the contemporary American West is on the money. Every turn of the page leaves a reader wondering, What next?, both in the story and in Sherwood's career." —Mike Mewshaw

"Steve Sherwood's Hardwater has everything you'd want in a thriller, not the least of which is a richly evocative sense of place: the high left corner of Wyoming up near Yellowstone, in a town where failed uranium mines have left the bitter taste of failure in white men's mouths and the area's resident reservation Shoshones and Arapahos find themselves literally at war with farmers and ranchers over water rights. When the editor of the local rag there gets hot on the trail of a serial killer or a poet with a macabre sense of humor, you have got a bang-on good contemporary Western."—C. W. Smith

Steve Sherwood , director of the William L. Adams Center for Writing at TCU, has published essays and fiction in numerous magazines and journals. With Christina Murphy he edited the St. Martin's Sourcebook for Writing Tutors (1995) and with Murphy and Joe Law he compiled Writing Centers: An Annotated Bibliography (Greenwood Press, 1996).

"John Cottle writes like the lovechild of Edgar Allan Poe and William Faulkner. The Blessings of Hard-Used Angels is weird and beautiful and honest."—Daniel Wallace, Big Fish

"These stories are exhilarating to read; some are breathtaking and achingly beautiful. When I finished The Blessings of Hard-Used Angels, I walked around for days seeing the world through its light. Do yourself a favor, buy this book, get in on the secret before everyone else knows what you soon will: here is the future of Southern fiction."—John Dufresne, Deep in the Shade of Paradise

John Cottle lives on Lake Martin in central Alabama with his wife, Nancy, and an assortment of ducks, deer, turkeys, and other wildlife. His work has appeared in numerous places, including Amaryllis, Literary Potpourri, Ink Pot, Gulfstream, and in an anthology titled, Working Hard for the Money: Stories and Poems of America's Working.

Winner, 2002 George Garrett Fiction Prize
Thomas Cobb
Acts of Contrition
ISBN: 1-881515-59-1 (LC 2003008909) paper
$16.95
5 1/2 x 8 1/2 pp. 160

"What's remarkable about Thomas Cobb's stories is that they manage, simultaneously, to be so hot and so cool. He takes a bead on men and their illusions—boys, too, halfway toward the adult passion that will forever bedevil them—and what he fixes in his sights is the male animal in extremis, pained, full of longing, and finally made sympathetic by his tough and honest observation."—Rosellen Brown

"These stories are built of small moments hauntingly rendered. And they are strong enough to bear the heft and heartbreak of adult life. The funny disorder of it all is made memorable by Mr. Cobb, and his work is worth reading, and even singing, aloud."—Fredrick Busch

"Thomas Cobb, in this stunning collection of short stories, draws unrelenting portraits of cruelty, whether it's the ravages of age in 'Ball Hawks' or the 'costly hobby' of dying in 'Oncology.' Even the 'acts of contrition' are twisted. In revealing the truths of human predatory instincts, Cobb continues to show that he is a master of characterization and one of our most daring craftsmen."—Jeffrey Greene, author, French Spirits

Thomas Cobb grew up in Tucson, Arizona, and attended the creative writing programs at the University of Arizona and the University of Houston. He teaches writing and literature at Rhode Island College. He lives in western Rhode Island with his wife, dog, and two cats. He is the author of one published novel, Crazy Heart.

Winner, 2001 George Garrett Fiction Prize
Naton Leslie
Marconi's Dream
ISBN: 1-881515-51-6 paper
$18.95
5 1/2 x 8 1/2 pp. 160

In thirteen stories written in a style so carefully crafted that they appear etched, Naton Leslie’s characters take a deep breath and make the impossible choices which circumstance, and the will to love and live, make inevitable.

"Naton Leslie’s passionately detailed prose wrings meaning from the lives of Americans passed over by the go-go economics of the last thirty years, the working poor of the rust belt and the old upstate New York mill towns gone to seed. His characters are desperately trying to find love and dignity in the wreckage of a society where the old verities—honesty, hard work, fair dealing— don’t count for much any more. Leslie writes with panache, he has a gift for metaphor, every story grabs the reader, every story contains a heart-stopping burst of dramatic intensity."—Douglas Glover, author, The Life and Times of Captain N. and 16 Categories of Desire

"Courage, compassion, humor in abundance, a college kid who ruptures Houdini’s appendix, a lab technician who drops Walt Whitman’s brain, a disc jockey orchestrating the memories of the dancers, a woman outwitting loneliness—the range of this collection is dizzying, its authenticity humbling, the stories as engaging as they are relentlessly honest. I read them with immense gratitude."—Steve Stern, author, A Plague of Dreamers and The Wedding Jester

A graduate of Youngstown State University and Ohio University and currently an associate professor of English at Siena College in New York, Naton Leslie is the author of two books of poetry—Moving To Find Work and Their Shadows Are Dark Daughters—and his poetry has appeared widely in such journals as Alaska Quarterly Review, California Quarterly, Prairie Schooner, and The Texas Review. He has published articles, reviews, and essays in North American Review and Mid-American Review, among others, and his fiction has appeared in such journals as Chariton Review and Ohio Review.

Winner, 2000 George Garrett Fiction Prize
Roger Hart
Erratics
ISBN: 1-881515-37-0 paper
$16.95
5 1/2 x 8 1/2 pp. 144

". . . there it was. A boulder as big as a Buick . . . I worked myself up, said the rock didn't belong in our neck of the woods, that it came from Canada. I told them to think how it was stuck for maybe a hundred thousand years inside some glacier before it fell free, only to find itself a thousand miles from home. 'Maybe we should take it back,' I said."

Like the Ice-age erratic discovered by this teacher, the characters in these twelve stories are in the wrong place, either physically or emotionally. Buried in the wrong grave, born at the wrong time, stuck working the wrong job, or caught on the wrong side of the state line, these northern Ohio residents communicate with animals, have sex in storerooms, believe in the magic of divining rods, see visions through prison fences, and worry that life's numbers don't add up. Their stories are the soft drip of icicles, the flap of wings, the thump, thump of hearts, the sounds we make when trying to find our way home.

Roger Hart's work has appeared in such journals as Ambergris, The Ohio Writer, Other Voices, Willow Springs, and Passages North. He and his wife, the poet Gwen Hart, are presently students in the MFA program at Minnesota State University.

Winner, 1999 George Garrett Fiction Prize
Don Meredith
Wing Walking
ISBN: 1-881515-32-X paper
$14.95
5 1/2 x 8 1/2 pp.160

"Did you ever see one of those air shows they put on at county fairs? A high flying act where a woman in goggles and overalls climbs from the cockpit while the pilot puts the plane through loop-the-loops and snap rolls? . . . You know the trick that keeps her from falling? She never lets go with one hand until she's got a firm grip on something solid with the other." The hard part for Marta Sinclair, heroine of the title story of Don Meredith's collection, is to discover what is solid, what illusory.

This dilemma occupies Meredith's fiction. With a style pitched to the nuances of character and setting, the stories in Wing Walking move from California's posh suburbs through the small towns of rural America to the coast of Turkey and the Tuscan hills. The characters are as diverse as the settings: from little Zatha Monroe struggling to play Mozart's D Minor Concerto on a garden hose to the shenanigans of art historian Eduardo Volpe, "skeptic, scholar, aesthete, renowned spelunker in the deep cave of the Italian Renaissance." These ten stories cover a wide range of character and feeling, but the author remains focused on the difficulty of distinguishing reality from illusion.

Born and raised in Southern California, Don Meredith migrated to San Francisco in 1960. Within a few years he sailed for Europe, where he lived on a Dalmatian island, then for ten years on a Tuscan farm. Twice a recipient of fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, he's the author of novels, short stories, essays and travel articles. Meredith's publications include two novels, Morning Line and Home Movies, and a collection of essays due out in late 2000 from The University of South Carolina Press, Where the Tigers Were: Travels Through Literary Landscapes. He and his wife Josie make their home on Lamu Island, Kenya.

Winner, 1998 George Garrett Fiction Prize
Peter Leach
Tales of Resistance
ISBN 1-881515-21-4 paper
$15.00
5 1/2 x 8 1/2 pp. 112

The tellers of Tales of Resistance speak in voices imagined from archival material or heard in Missouri by the author, a returned native of St. Louis. They act out personal dramas set off by social forces that seem beyond their comprehension or control, but in some way or other they resist. In one an Ozark boy tells of his sexual initiation by a Normal School girl who becomes a ringleader in the pickers’ strike against the strawberry growers, including his parents. In another a crippled judge tells of trying to save three slaves accused of crimes against whites from lynching by a mob, afraid their masters will run them off and sell them to avoid financial loss. Other stories take place in a lead mine, a headlamp factory, in the Bootheel cotton fields, on a Gasconade River float trip, a river bottoms tavern among the soybean fields, and in an Oto-Missouria Indian village thrown into upheaval by the visit of a Scots trader sent out by the Spaniards to find a way through the Shining Mountains to the Western Sea.

Leach, a native of St. Louis, has published fiction in Virginia Quarterly Review, Minnesota Review, Nebraska Review (1989 Fiction Award), Indiana Review, Kansas Quarterly/Arkansas Review, Artful Dodge, River Styx, Best Little Magazine Fiction (NYU Press), and Prize Stories: The O. Henry Awards. He is a National Endowment for the Arts Creative Writing Fellowship recipient.