Description:
Relationships are challenged in The Divide, award-winning writer Evan Morgan Williams' newest collection. Set in the Mountain West, place is not just a backdrop; it is a provocation, an invitation to hope, and a mirror to reflect either consolation or indifference, depending on the case. To solve a problem in the West is to solve a problem initiated by the sense of possibility that the place allows. Characters make difficult choices. The stakes are high. For Williams, division exposes character, and through breakage comes the possibility of redemption. The Divide showcases a writer at the height of his power.
Brief description: Evan Morgan Williams is an award-winning story writer. A 2024 Oregon Literary Fellow in Fiction and a recipient of the Laurell Swails and Donald Monroe Memorial Fellowship, he has published over seventy-five short stories in literary magazines, including The Kenyon Review, ZYZZYVA, Alaska Quarterly Review, Witness, and The Antioch Review. He has published three collections of short stories: Thorn (2014), winner of the gold medal from the Independent Publishers Book Awards; Canyons
Review Quotes:
"A collection of memorable character studies with a good sense of presence-and absence. "
-Kirkus Reviews
"The reader can feel these stories. . . . That's Williams' power with language and characters, one felt in the body even as an observer."
-Variant Literature
"Expertly crafted and compelling . . . a literary mirror for the reader."
-Rachel King, Colorado Book Award Winner
"These stories might serve as a guidebook could we only backtrack and manage to say the right thing in that critical moment where once we were silent."
-Martha Gies, author of Up All Night
"Insightful, compelling, and beautifully written . . . a storyteller working at his peak."
-C.B. Bernard, author of Ordinary Bear
"Lean, precise, and tactile, Williams creates worlds where everything is exactly as it is and nothing is as it seems."
-Jeff Fearnside, author of Ships in the Desert
"Williams' stories flow like a Rocky Mountain stream, in cool, clear prose."
-Ken Post, author of Greyhound Cowboy