Lex Williford

Michael Martone

A collection of recent nonfictional short works is comprised of memoirs, personal essays, cultural criticism, and more, in a volume that includes pieces by such names as Joan Didion, Annie Dillard, and Maxine Hong Kingston. Original. 50,000 first printing.

Work from 1970 to the Present

Touchstone Anthology of Contemporary Creative Nonfiction

Rosellen Brown

Collects short stories from authors across the literary landscape

Fifty North American Stories Since 1970

The Scribner Anthology of Contemporary Short Fiction

From memoir to journalism, personal essays to cultural criticism, this indispensable anthology brings together works from all genres of creative nonfiction, with pieces by fifty contemporary writers including Cheryl Strayed, David Sedaris, Barbara Kingsolver, and more. Selected by five hundred writers, English professors, and creative writing teachers from across the country, this collection includes only the most highly regarded nonfiction work published since 1970. Contributers include: Jo Ann Beard, Wendell Berry, Eula Biss, Mary Clearman Blew, Charles Bowden, Janet Burroway, Kelly Grey Carlisle, Anne Carson, Bernard Cooper, Michael W. Cox, Annie Dillard, Mark Doty, Brian Doyle, Tony Earley, Anthony Farrington, Harrison Candelaria Fletcher, Diane Glancy, Lucy Grealy, William Harrison, Robin Hemley, Adam Hochschild, Jamaica Kincaid, Barbara Kingsolver , Ted Kooser, Sara Levine, E.J. Levy, Phillip Lopate, Barry Lopez, Thomas Lynch, Lee Martin, Rebecca McCLanahan, Erin McGraw, John McPhee, Brenda Miller, Dinty W. Moore, Kathleen Norris, Naomi Shihab Nye, Lia Purpura, Richard Rhodes, Bill Roorbach, David Sedaris, Richard Selzer, Sue William Silverman, Floyd Skloot, Lauren Slater, Cheryl Strayed, Amy Tan, Ryan Van Meter, David Foster Wallace, and Joy Williams.

Fiction. Winner of the 10th Annual Rose Metal Press Short Short Chapbook Contest, judged by Ira Sukrungruang. A concise and compelling novella-in-flash spanning decades from the 1960s to the present, Lex Williford's SUPERMAN ON THE ROOF offers an elegiac coming-of-age tale and a family portrait imbued with tragedy, guilt, grief, and forgiveness. The arguments, injustices, and triumphs of childhood echo into the adult world in unforgettable detail in these short powerful stories. This limited edition chapbook features letterpress covers and specialty endpapers. "SUPERMAN ON THE ROOF did not let me go. There is a red siren of urgency in Williford's every sentence, every word. It is a book that reiterates what Lee K. Abbott once said to me many years ago: 'Everything is the matter in the short story.' Everything is the matter in SUPERMAN ON THE ROOF. In its brevity, its pace, the contained voice of the consistent narrator, in the flashes of story about a family trying hard to find themselves after heartbreak." Ira Sukrungruang"

Superman on the Roof

A husband and wife, unable to speak to each other without arguing, face the dissolution of their marriage when they smuggle his mother's body out of Mexico. Two boys, confronting abandonment by their father, go to the Texas State Fair and stumble upon a way to get their mother out of bed. Thomas "Hoot" Ponder and his nephew find common ground in whiskey and storytelling amid the comedy surrounding death and dying. A chiropractor who loves science fiction movies struggles with his sexual fantasies about one of his patients, a Wal-Mart cashier who can't stop talking about her pain. In the powerful title story, Cal Macauley--driven mad by his wife's horrible death--faces mourning, regret, and the inevitability of forgetting by striking out against himself and the rattlesnakes on his mountain.

Lex Williford

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