This Week's Recommended Reading: Kathleen Winter's "Of the Fountain"

Check out Kathleen Winter!

This morning her short story "Of the Fountain" was published by Electric Literature's Recommended Reading, one the best literary journals online, and among the best anywhere. ELRR posts one new story each week from a host of established and emerging authors. Some stories are recommended directly by the magazine (like Sasha Graybosch's amazing "Recovery Period"), but more are recommended by other authors (Aimee Bender rec'ed "Cathay" by Steven Millhauser), literary journals (Virginia Quarterly Review rec'ed "The Grave" By Katherine Anne Porter), and indie presses (House of Anansi rec'ed "Champ de Mars" by Mireille Silcoff). The result is a thoughtfully selected gallery of astonishingly good fiction, all chosen by super-editor Halimah Marcus. You can read Kathleen's story (and an introduction by our own Dan Wells) here.

This isn't the first excerpt published over the past month. "Anhinga," another of Kathleen's pieces, was placed in Storyville — a venue The New Yorker crowned the "digital pick of the week" for new fiction. Her story, along with others by William Vollmann, Donald Antrim, and Kseniya Melnik, were sent to subscribers of the Storyville app, and are currently available for purchase online. More on "Anhinga" can be found here.

Both "Of the Fountain" and "Anhinga" were excerpted from Kathleen's latest collection of short stories, The Freedom in American Songs, published by Biblioasis this fall. In addition to all the good reviews its received over the past few months, we were overjoyed to see it listed among the 5 Best Canadian Books of the Year on Amazon.ca last weekend.

We couldn't be more pleased.

Special note to readers in the Maritimes: Kathleen will be a featured author of the Lorenzo Reading Series this January. A schedule of her appearances and readings will be available on their site soon.