Surreal South '09

Anthology of Short Fiction

by Laura Benedict

Press 53

April 6, 2012

ISBN-10: 0982576013

ISBN-13: 9780982576014

Available in: Trade Size

Surreal South '09
by Laura Benedict

“Sublimity, as we choose to define it, is that quality a story possesses when it is, in its entirety, completely unpredictable as well as completely inevitable and authentic.... A story—a real story, of the type that we’ve gathered here; not the mock-stories, the painless, bloodless vignettes that make up so much of today’s “literary” fiction-involves apocalypse. Apocalypse means a revelation (the literal meaning of the word apocalypse is a "lifting of the veil”), and a very specific type of revelation: the destruction of an old order, followed by a time of disorder and chaos, and the replacement of the old order by a new and entirely different order.... Sublimity and apocalypse. Anti-rationality and surreality. The call for the literary artist is nothing less than to reveal and remake everything; and the writers whose work you are about to experience have boldly answered that call. We invite you to abandon to its well-deserved fate the wreckage of the rational, and to enjoy.” — from the Introduction, by Laura & Pinckney Benedict.



Laura Benedict's Bio

Laura Benedict is the Edgar- and ITW Thriller Award- nominated author of eight novels of mystery and suspense, including The Stranger Inside (Publishers Weekly starred review), and the Bliss House gothic novels and stories. Her latest book is a compilation of her short fiction, When I Make Love to the Bug Man: Collected Stories. Her stories have appeared in Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, Strand Magazine, and in numerous anthologies. A native of Cincinnati, Ohio, she lives in Southern Illinois with her family.