American Fiction Volume 13

"Hearts Like Lemons in Fists of Dew" and "Winter Burial" (written by a mortician) lead off this collection of the best unpublished stories by new writers.

From "Circus":

After the Tbilisi circus school closed, Shukhia looked for work until the night her father brought home a graying bus driver who'd worked in a Mercedes plant in Germany. "Meet your rich husband," he said. They drank arakiand toasted the advantages of a seventeen-year-old wife, while she and her mother served lamb and pilaf.

Judges previous volumes include Louise Erdrich, Tim O'Brien, Joyce Carol Oates, and Raymond Carver.

Bruce Pratt, Editor: Bruce Pratt, long recognized as one of New England’s finest writers of short fiction, has recently published his first poetry collection, Boreal. The book has aroused enthusiasm among all who have seen it in draft form, among them Dzvinia Orlowsky, who writes as follows: A memorable outpouring of passion and paradox, Pratt’s pitch-perfect poems entwine uncertainties into a retrospective which rather than striking back at experience, holds it gracefully, gratefully, close at hand. Again and again I’m drawn back into these poems of faith, deeply rooted in a man standing firm, chest-deep in the current of each passing, uncertain moment, any desire to be rescued not out of fear but because someone looked for you and not finding you where you should be,/ dove into the waves for love.” Gerald Costanzo has commented that Bruce Pratt’s poems are smart and accomplished. He keeps a close watch on the natural world, and an even closer one on human nature. Boreal is a collection which extends pleasure to insight on every page.” Pratt was born in Bronxville, NY, and grew up in Connecticut. He attended Franklin and Marshall College, where he majored in Religious Studies, receiving his B.A. in 1972. After a short stint in the furniture industry, he began a two-decade career as a folk and blues singer/songwriter, appearing with many of the finest performers in that genre and touring regularly with Ramblin’ Jack Elliott. In the mid-Nineties, eager to spend more time with his wife and sons, Pratt began a new career as a teacher and coach at John Bapst Memorial, a small private high school in Bangor, Maine. His teams having won five consecutive state outdoor track titles, Pratt has five times been voted Maine State Girls’ Track Coach of the Year. In 2001 he received an M.A. in English from the University of Maine and in 2004 graduated from the Stonecoast MFA program at the University of Southern Maine, where he currently teaches fiction and advanced fiction writing. Pratt’s poetry and fiction have appeared in more than two dozen journals and literary magazines during the past few years and have garnered several awards, among them the 2007 André Dubus Short Fiction Award. Pratt was assistant editor for two volumes of American Fiction, and this is his second volume as editor.

Michael White, Guest Judge: Michael White is the author of six novels: Soul Catcher, which was a Booksense and Historical Novels Review selection, as well as a finalist for the Connecticut Book Award, A Brother’s Blood, which was a New York Times Book Review Notable Book and a Barnes and Noble Discover Great New Writers nominee; The Blind Side of the Heart, an Alternate Book-of-the-Month Club selection; A Dream of Wolves, which received starred reviews from Booklist and Publisher’s Weekly, and is under option by Miracle Pictures; and The Garden of Martyrs, also a Connecticut Book Award finalist. His latest novel (William Morrow, 2010) is Beautiful Assassin. A collection of his short stories, Marked Men, was published by the University of Missouri Press. He has also published over 45 short stories in national magazines and journals, and has won the Advocate Newspapers Fiction Award and been nominated for both a National Magazine Award and a Pushcart. He was the founding editor of the yearly fiction anthology American Fiction as well as Dogwood. He is the founder and director of Fairfield University's low-residency MFA Creative Writing Program (www.fairfield.edu/mfa). He lives on a lake in Guilford, CT, with his black lab Henry.

Jill Birdsall: Jill Birdsall enjoys inspiration for writing at the lovely Shrewsbury River in New Jersey. Her short stories can be read in Alaska Quarterly Review, Ascent, Chicago Quarterly Review, Crazyhorse, Doctor T.J. Eckleburg Review, Emerson Review, Gargoyle, Iowa Review, Painted Bride Quarterly Review, Potomac Review, Southern Humanities Review and Story Quarterly. An MFA graduate of Columbia University’s S