Description: These stories amount to something more than a celebration of the holidays dotting our calendars from month to month. Even though holidays can occasion a return to the familiar, these stories challenge traditional associations. Each story serves to complicate how we observe the human observation of holidays and offers a nuanced understanding of related themes such as family and motherhood, travel, grief and mourning processes, and memory. More generally, holidays are days of observance, and that aspect alone offers a lot to unpack.
Brief description: ETHAN LAUGHMAN is among the few who have read every Flannery O'Connor Award-winning volume. He collaborated closely with the series' authors in compiling these new anthologies. He currently teaches high school English.