Short Story Collections by (and About) Women
R iding down to the Weymouth Center on Saturday, I heard two bits of news from Press 53 publisher Kevin Morgan Watson. One, that he was not going to publish any more novels or memoirs, so that he could focus on short story collections (his first love) and poetry. I'm happy he's making this move, even though it means I'll be back in the hunt for a publisher and/or agent for my next Southern/crime novel Backwater , now in the writing - because short fiction deserves its champion. The other bit of news is that Darlin' Neal, author of Rattlesnakes and the Moon from Press 53, will be back soon with another collection of short fiction. I love Rattlesnakes , an unflinching look into the lives of blue-collar woman that take us into the truck stops and trailer parks, but doesn't showing women at the hardscrabble end of things as simply victims. Her heartbreaking stories of the road and hard times are set in small places of the South and West. In “Lafayette,” a woman