Nathan Ballingrud\'s Shirley Jackson Award winning debut collection is a shattering and luminous experience not to be missed by those who love to explore the darker parts of the human psyche.
He lives in Asheville, North Carolina, with his daughter..
His story The Monsters of Heaven won the inaugural Shirley Jackson Award.
He worked as a bartender in New Orleans and New York City and a cook on offshore oil rigs.
Nathan Ballingrud was born in Massachusetts but has spent most of his life in the South.
All are faced with the loneliest corners of themselves and strive to find an escape.
Sometimes, they are ruined; sometimes redeemed.
The often working-class people in these stories are driven to extremes by love.
Sometimes these are Monsters in their traditional guises, sometimes they wear the faces of parents, lovers, or ourselves.
And also monster stories.
These are love stories.
They are us and we are them and Ballingrud\'s intense focus makes these stories incredibly intense and irresistible.
Monsters, real and imagined, external and internal, are the subject.
Nathan Ballingrud\'s Shirley Jackson Award winning debut collection is a shattering and luminous experience not to be missed by those who love to explore the darker parts of the human psyche
