Maureen Pilkington

Maureen Pilkington’s new book of short stories, This Side of Water, (Regal House Publishing) is the Winner of the 2019 American Fiction Award, a silver medalist in the 2020 Ippy Awards, 2020 Eric Hoffer Finalist, 2020 International Book Awards Finalist, all in the short story category.

This Side of Water was praised by award winning author, Peter Orner: "These are brave stories. Pilkington seems willing to go anywhere she needs to for a story, and fully inhabit any character. This Side of Water is a wide-ranging and darkly beautiful collection of stories."

Maureen Pilkington’s fiction and creative non-fiction have appeared in numerous anthologies, journals and magazines including: The Antioch Review, Ploughshares, Puerto del Sol, Confrontation, Orchid Literary Review, Santa Barbara Review, Bridge: Art & Literature in Chicago, Red Rock Review, Pedestal, SNR Review, Patapsco Review, Miranda, The Stone Table Review, Marco Polo Quarterly, Secrets: MSR Fiction Anthology, The Blotter, Literary Mama, Punctuate, Stone Voices, Fiction Southeast, Covey Club, Still Points Arts Quarterly and numerous others.

Her personal essays have appeared in the Weston Magazine Group’s fifteen NY/CT/NJ editions covering the New York City metro and suburban luxury market.

Pilkington worked in book publishing as a subsidiary rights director and received an MFA from Sarah Lawrence College. Currently, she is working on an essay collection, and a novel that takes place in Manhattan and Provence. She is also the founder and director of Page Turners, a writing program for the Archdiocese of New York’s inner city schools. Pilkington was born in New York. She lives in Rye and Manhattan. Find her online at www.maureenpilkington.com.

Additional praise for This Side of Water:Stories

"Brutally eloquent. A mesmerizing collection with a heat seeking eye for brilliant humor and intense passionate loves."

Ernesto Quinonez

Author of the bestselling novel, Bodega Dreams

"Maureen Pilkington's This Side of Water reminds you that the brief glimpse offered by the short story form can stop and startlingly recharge your heart. In all of these stories the dialogue throws sparks as it reveals the ways that vulnerable people talk who feel the competing needs to evade and to give themselves over to truthfulness. The veil lifts here on compulsions resulting from uncontainable desires; it lifts here on private longing and guilt and fear. Like the sensuous energies of water, these stories alter your body's responsiveness to the world, inviting you to experience new aliveness."

Kevin McIlvoy, novelist and short story writer, is author of At the Gate of All Wonder and 57 Octaves Below Middle C.

"Filled with humor, honesty, and wonderfully perceptive details these suspenseful stories, told in an original voice, delight and illuminate."

Sheila Kohler

author most recently of Once We Were Sisters