Toni Mirosevich

After moving to a coastal town a gay couple is drawn to a group of outsiders living on the edge of the sea. In Spell Heaven, a linked story collection, a lesbian couple moves to a coast town and unexpectedly finds a sense of belonging with a group of outsiders. Stories include the tale of an undocumented boy's drowning when a wave pulls him out to sea, an ex–FBI agent’s surveillance of a man who leaves chocolate bars at a tree in a weekly ritual, a mother on meth who teaches a lesson on mercy, and Kite Man, who flies kites from a fishing pole and sells drugs on the side. His motto: When the kites fly, you can buy. The narrator of these stories, raised in a working-class Croatian American fishing family and immigrant community, chooses an early career in labor-oriented jobs. Years later, she finds herself in an academic position in a white-collar world “where the clothes are clean but the politics are dirty.” She questions her own stereotypes about her neighbors and gradually begins to question her life path. Spell Heaven celebrates those who are looking for a human connection in an increasingly isolated world.

and Other Stories

Spell Heaven

After moving to a coastal town a gay couple is drawn to a group of outsiders living on the edge of the sea In Spell Heaven, a linked story collection, a lesbian couple moves to a coast town and unexpectedly finds a sense of belonging with a group of outsiders. Stories include the tale of an undocumented boy's drowning when a wave pulls him out to sea, an ex–FBI agent’s surveillance of a man who leaves chocolate bars at a tree in a weekly ritual, a mother on meth who teaches a lesson on mercy, and Kite Man, who flies kites from a fishing pole and sells drugs on the side. His motto: When the kites fly, you can buy. The narrator of these stories, raised in a working-class Croatian American fishing family and immigrant community, chooses an early career in labor-oriented jobs. Years later, she finds herself in an academic position in a white-collar world “where the clothes are clean but the politics are dirty.” She questions her own stereotypes about her neighbors and gradually begins to question her life path. Spell Heaven celebrates those who are looking for a human connection in an increasingly isolated world.

Poems

My Oblique Strategies

Toni Mirosevich's first collection of nonfiction explores life's shifting, tilting moments. A chance meeting with a homeless stranger, the feel of a nickel in the palm of her hand, a conversation about politics while watching a game show -- all are seemingly unremarkable events, but each has the possibility of opening for us a new view, an insight, and the experience of wonder. Through happenstance -- the chance or accidental happening -- we see in unrelated, unexpected events profound connections that form a net of meaning.

Tales of Happenstance

Pink Harvest

To write about what it is like to grow up in a working-class commercial fishing family, work as a nontraditional laborer in the physical trades, labor in a marriage and then come out, emerge from the assumption of excellent health into the reality of chronic illness, return to school, become a writer and a teacher of writing - and through it all love the ones you love, be sustained by them - requires more than one voice, more than one form. In The Rooms We Make Our Own, Toni Mirosevich does just this. She builds the complex structure of her lesbian experience section by section, constructing her life so that its framework is exposed for us to read. Poetry shares the space with fiction, "interrupting" each other as events in real life do.

Toni Mirosevich

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