Shann Ray Reconfigures the American West

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The American West has long been a place where myth and legend have flourished. Where men stood tall and lived rough. But that West is no more. Shann Ray explores and redfines this changed landscape in AMERICAN MASCULINE, the 2010 Bakeless Prize for Fiction-winner.

 

"Think Hemingway or Jim Harrison, and know that Ray's collection is the deserving winner of the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference Bakeless Prize." Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

"Ray's collection has an unsettling power as his roughened characters incrementally come to terms with their humanity, fallibility, and their realized capacity for atonement. This is a highly accomplished and intensely lyrical debut." Publishers Weekly (starred review)

"Ray’s taut, fragmented prose evokes the fragility of the male ego in stories so layered with tenderness and violence, hope and despair, that together they form a true and pure depiction of sorrow and a primer for forgiveness." Booklist (starred review)

"AMERICAN MASCULINE does what the best fiction should: it breaks open the human heart with honesty and clarity, showing us the bad that exists alongside, and is often indistinguishable from, the good." Shelf Awareness (starred review)

AMERICAN MASCULINE is now available from Graywolf Press.

 

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