Winner of the Flannery O'Connor Award for Short Fiction. Filled with sharp dialogue, engaging characters, and offbeat detail, the twelve stories collected in The Melancholy of Departure describe an outsider's world of longing, disillusion, and survival, where hope is found in unexpected places and understanding comes from unlikely sources. Fully aware of the dangers that await us all — loneliness, commitment, heartbreak, love — the men and women in this collection call out to us f...

Therese is a fiercely independent prostitute of mixed race. Through her eyes, we witness the birth of modern Quebec in the heady days of Les Automatistes and their Refus global after World War II. Both participant and keen observer, she records her intimate relationships with clergy, trade-unionists, fellow sex workers, and artists. As she grows from orphan to apprentice to sage, we behold the evolution of an artist and a soul.

Therese is a fiercely independent prostitute of mixed race. Through her eyes, we witness the birth of modern Quebec in the heady days of Les Automatistes and their Refus global after World War II. Both participant and keen observer, she records her intimate relationships with clergy, trade-unionists, fellow sex workers, and artists. As she grows from orphan to apprentice to sage, we behold the evolution of an artist and a soul.

Work, and the coffee-fueled day-to-day grind, is the shared concern of these stories, which have been chosen from among the hundreds that have appeared in the prestigious Flannery O'Connor Award for Short Fiction series.More than seventy volumes, which include approximately eight hundred stories, have won the Flannery O'Connor Award. This stunning trove of always engaging, often groundbreaking short fiction is the common source for this anthology on work—and for planned anthologies...

A collection of 21 essays. Titles include: Finding Poems; The Gospel of Thomas; Saturn and the Flying Boy; On Not Being Southern; The Soul, Herself Surprised;My Mother, Remembering; Seeing the Cézannes; Drawing and Talent; The Dear Love of Comrades; An Interview with Lynda Barry; Teaching/Writing; Feeding the Ghosts of Christmas Past; August 1974; The Enigma of Healing; Bardo, Texas; Palm Springs: Bonfires of the Banalities; Don't Shoot, I'm Canadian; Jill Johnston: An Unofficial Ubiquitar...