I’m thrilled to announce that Eastern Washington University Press has just published a short story collection by my wife, Midge Raymond: Forgetting English.
Readers of this blog will certainly appreciate the title of one of Midge’s stories: “Translation Memory.” Midge is the only person I know who can turn an obscure translation term into great drama.
Many of the stories in this collection are award-winners in themselves, having been published in Indiana Review (“First Sunday” received the Indiana Review Prize for Fiction), new south (the title story, “Forgetting English,” received the magazine’s annual fiction award), Bellevue Literary Review, Ontario Review, Roanoke Review, and American Literary Review.
Clearly, I’m a fan of Midge’s writing, so I’ll let a more objective reviewer vouch for her work:
“When you forget English, you might learn to speak the forbidden language of your sister’s Tongan lover — you might find you understand the sweet murmur of the Gentoo and the ecstatic cry of Emperor Penguins. When the man you saved from the sea chooses the icy water a second time, you may bend to the universal posture of grief, recognizing the way your body echoes a bird’s in a wild communion of sorrow. Midge Raymond’s stories are a revelation and a delight, a journey from the frozen desert at the bottom of the world to the lush rainforest of Hawai’i. Prepare yourself to think in Chinese, to start over, to reveal your worst crime and discover you are a stranger to yourself, born again into a world where all things become wondrous and new, terrifying and possible.”
— Melanie Rae Thon, author of First, Body and Sweet Hearts
To download a story excerpt and learn more, visit www.midgeraymond.com.
