The Chattahoochee Review Guest Author Series is pleased to welcome award-winning short-story writer Marylee MacDonald to Georgia State University’s Perimeter College on Wednesday, Feb. 17, 2016 for a reading from and discussion about the short stories in her debut collection, Bonds of Love & Blood.
To read the 12 prize-winning stories in Bonds of Love & Blood is to circumnavigate the globe. From Mexico to Turkey and Prague to Thailand, solitary travelers stand at crossroads in their lives. With the grist of her own wanderlust providing the fodder from which to turn her tales, MacDonald invites readers to spend spring break in Key West with Lana, a fitness coach trying to shape up her son; join Tanaka, “The Ambassador of Foreign Affairs,” who arrives in Marin County on the eve of his daughter’s wedding, only to discover she wants to call it off; and venture through the streets of Istanbul with a smooth-talking rug dealer who needs money to keep his brother out of prison.
With prose described as tight, interesting, and evocative, the stories in Bonds of Love & Blood effortlessly straddle the divide between hope and futility, with people both young and old either searching for what it means to forge a satisfying life or coming to terms with their regrets. It is a collection about romantic pairings, mothers and fathers, children, grandparents, cousins, and friends; fiction brimming with humor, pathos, and emotional wisdom.
To hear more about Marylee MacDonald’s work, please join The Chattahoochee Review on Wednesday, Feb. 17 from 11:30 a.m. to 12:45 p.m. in NB-2100/2101, on the Dunwoody Campus. All are welcome to attend, and faculty members are encouraged to bring their classes. Light refreshments will be provided during the book sales and signing at the end of the reading and discussion.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Marylee MacDonald’s short stories have won the Barry Hannah Prize, the American Literary Review Fiction Prize, the Matt Clark Prize, the Ron Rash Award, and an Illinois Arts Council Fellowship for Fiction. In October 2015, MacDonald’s novel, Montpelier Tomorrow, won a Gold Medal for Drama from Readers’ Favorites International Book Festival and was a finalist for the Eric Hoffer Award, the Faulkner-Wisdom Prize, the 2015 Next Generation Indie Awards, and the Bellwether Prize. In 2014, her chapbook, The Rug Bazaar, won the Jeanne M. Leiby Memorial Chapbook Competition. A former writing fellow at Arizona State University’s Piper Center, MacDonald has a master’s degree in creative writing from San Francisco State University and a certificate in novel writing from Stanford. More information about Marylee MacDonald can be found on her Website.
AUTHOR QUOTE: “The cover of the book depicts a man standing on a seashore. He’s the elderly Japanese father, Mr. Tanaka, in “The Ambassador of Foreign Affairs.” He’s bringing an old-fashioned leather suitcase to his daughter’s wedding. In addition to his shirts and travel documents he’s carrying his loneliness and vulnerabilities. . . .We all carry baggage from the past, and when I write short stories, I interrogate the characters to find out ‘What’s in the suitcase?’ Besides t-shirts and 3 oz. bottles, my travelers bring their fantasies and emotional baggage.”
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The Chattahoochee Review Guest Author Series serves to connect the strong, vibrant and diverse literary community The Chattahoochee Review has built over the course of its 35-year publishing history to the college’s EDGE Quality Enhancement Plan such that students will have a greater opportunity to engage with real-world writers who can better shape their writing and understanding of literature in all of its forms.
