Stewart O’Nan’s new novel, The Odds, will be released this week by Viking Adult. O’Nan’s thirteenth novel, The Odds centers around Art and Marion Fowler, who throw everything they have into a second honeymoon in Niagara Falls in an attempt to salvage their finances and their marriage.

O’Nan was the fall 2011 Melanie Brown Lecturer at Chatham University, and an interview with him will be featured in Issue 9 of The Fourth River.

Janisse Ray’s critically acclaimed book, Ecology of a Cracker Childhood, is now available as a Kindle ebook! The book has been selected as a New York Times Notable Book of 2000 and a Bloomsbury Review Editors’ Favorite Book of 2000, and has won numerous literary awards.

Ray’s essays, “An Endangered Literature” and “Sugaring with Jerry,” appear in Issue 8 of The Fourth River.

Peggy Rambach’s novel Fighting Gravity is now available in paperback!  And, for the first time, Fighting Gravity is also available for the Kindle.  The New York Times writes of the book, “…[Rambach's] prose is wiry, deft and piercingly descriptive; she gets well inside emotional events while keeping her detached regard unruffled.”

Rambach’s  story “Getting Rid of Pigeons,” about a delightfully cranky superintendent, appears in Issue 8 of The Fourth River.

Daffodils One Sunday Before Snow

Shaun T. Griffin is the author of four books of poetry, most recently Woodsmoke, Wind, and the Peregrine, 2008.  He recently completed editing a book of essays on the late poet and critic, Hayden Carruth:  From Sorrow’s Well. He runs a non-profit organization in northern Nevada.

Explaining his decision, Yune said, “Perkins’ story has a wildness to it that I don’t see very often.  The description of the Mormon missionaries is eerie and completely changes the story’s weather.  And despite its weirdness and theatricality, this story has teeth.  “Buds, and Bells” was a favorite among the readers, and it’s an honor to nominate it for this prize.”

“Buds, and Bells, and Stars Without a Name” appears in Issue 8.