Let's Do (Katherine Anne Porter Prize in Short Fiction)

Description

In the nine stories of Let's Do, various calamities strike ordinary Midwesterners, who cope with a mixture of good intentions and ineptitude. Balancing humor with painful clarity, author Rebecca Meacham pulls readers into the lives of characters who struggle with and more often against--change. "Rebecca Meacham has one of the freshest voices I've encountered in a long time. Blatantly wise, she creates stories that are deliciously subversive, brave and outrageous, reminiscent of a young Alice Hoffman. As the lives of her characters get derailed, they move with the damaged grace of walking through broken glass on tiptoe. This is a writer whose words speak with emotional resonance about the resilience of the human heart--a beautiful, authentic talent who knows that when you turn life upside down, you get good measures of both trouble and laughter, a lesson the very best writers recognize early."--Jonis Agee, Judge "The characters in Let's Do are the kind of people we don't want to be--drunks, stalkers, lonely ex-wives and husbands, grieving Parents, all decent people who do indecent things and Rebecca Meacham writes about them brilliantly, with empathy, intelligence and a scathing sense of humor. This is a terrific debut, by a fearless, hugely talented writer."--Brock Clarke, author, What We Won't Do "The world of Rebecca Meacham's Let's Do is as brilliant as a diamond. Even the simplest actions--a walk across a snowy landscape, a visit from a sister--shine with unexpected light, and lives that at first appear to be simple are full of angles and refraction, showing greater complexity than we might have dreamed. Meacham's vision is complex, her characters rich and memorable, and the impact of her stories is dazzling."--Erin McGraw, author, The Baby Tree