A very happy publication day to Ethel Rohan and her short story collection, In the Event of Contact, published by Dzanc Books.
The book won the 2019 Dzanc Short Story Collection Prize and is receiving great reviews: “In The Event of Contact is a remarkable collection of understated yet powerful stories about people who trespass, and are trespassed against. Rohan writes with such sensitivity and compassion, and long after I was done reading, I kept thinking about her characters and how uniquely she gave witness to their complicated lives and private pain”, wrote Edan Lepucki, New York Times bestselling author of California.
And Caroline Leavitt, New York Times bestselling author of Pictures of You and With or Without You, says: “Rohan’s stories are small electric shocks of discovery. Here, in a perfect dozen, she writes about how love and wonder can coexist right alongside betrayal, danger, rage. How can such a collection be both unsettling and redemptive? How can any of us tease out light in our darkness? Rohan’s alchemy points the way.”
From the publisher’s website: “In the Event of Contact chronicles characters profoundly affected by physical connection, or its lack. Among them, a scrappy teen vies to be the next Sherlock Holmes; an immigrant daughter must defend her decision to remain childless; a guilt-ridden woman is haunted by the disappearance of her childhood friend; a cantankerous crossing guard celebrates getting run over by a truck; an embattled priest with dementia determines to perform a heroic, redemptive act, if he can only remember how; and an aspirational, angst-ridden mother captains the skies.
“Amidst backgrounds of trespass and absence, the indelible characters of In the Event of Contact seek renewed belief in themselves, recovery, and humanity.”
Many congratulations to Ethel and we wish her huge success with the collection.
Ethel Rohan was shortlisted for the 2012 Bristol Short Story Prize for her story, Beekiller, which was published in our Volume 5 anthology https://www.tangentbooks.co.uk/shop/bristol-short-story-prize-volume-5