Frost Heaves by Teresa Stores

Teresa Stores

Teresa Stores is the winner of the 2009 Kore Press Short Fiction Award, selected by Tayari Jones. She is the author of three novels, Getting to the Point(Naiad, 1995), SideTracks (Naiad, 1996), and Backslide (Spinster’s Ink, 2008). Her work has appeared in numerous literary magazines, including Sinister Wisdom, Rock & Sling, Cicada, Out Magazine, MotherVerse, Blithe House Quarterly, Oregon Literary Review, Bloom Magazine, Earth’s Daughters,Blueline, Damselfly Press, SawPalm, and Kudzu. Her work has been supported by grants from the Vermont Arts Council and the Barbara Deming Fund, and she was a resident at Bread Loaf and a scholar at The Community of Writers at Squaw Valley.

A graduate of the M.F.A. program at Emerson College, Stores is an associate professor of English at the University of Hartford (her homepage). Although a native of the deep south, she is a happy and permanent Yankee transplant residing in Newfane, Vermont, with her partner, artist Susan Jarvis, and their twins. “Frost Heaves” is the title piece of her nearly completed collection of twelve linked stories set in a small Vermont community over one year.

Of Stores’ story “Frost Heaves,” Tayari Jones says:

“Frost Heaves is powerful mediation on grief and reclamation. This is the story of Katherine Crossly, as she assesses her life after a half century of marriage.  What happens when a woman realizes that her dreams were not deferred, but stifled before they are even fully imagined?  Set against the beautifully drawn landscapes of a small town in Maine, this is the story of a thaw, both literal and metaphorical.

Teresa Stores writes with compassion and insight, finding the inescapable  truths hiding in the plain sight–layered over an ordinary life.With vivid details and an original and convincing voice, “Frost Heaves” manages to be both uncompromising and triumphant.  Teresa Stores is a beautiful writer and I look forward to seeing her work for years to come.”

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