Sundress Releases Wind on the Moon by Katie Burgess
Sundress Publications announces the 2019 release of Wind on the Moon by Katie Burgess, our 2018 Chapbook Competition winner. The stories in Wind on the Moon fit together seamlessly, creating a world that’s as real to us readers as it is enchanted with love and grief.
Katie Burgess uses playful form and familiar tales to distill the most complex family dynamics: a daughter reckons with her mother meeting her lover in the language of a math textbook. Adam and Eve become a husband and wife who “always did encourage each other’s bad behavior.” In the final story, the act of writing conflates with the creation of the universe, our narrator critiquing the work of a god: “I liked how in your first draft everything revolved around the Earth. That makes a lot more sense if the people there are going to be important.” And Burgess shows us the importance of all people, encouraging empathy and the desire to get to know every character, every person, no matter how insignificant they may seem at first. Burgess writes with an honesty so clear it aches. Wind on the Moon is one of those chapbooks you can’t wait to share with everyone you love.
Of the work, George Singleton, author of Staff Picks said, “I’ve never read in the literary biographies how Lydia Davis and Donald Barthelme hooked up, but the result is clear: Katie Burgess. Wind on the Moon is an amazing collection of short, jaundice-eyed, hilarious, sly, insightful, intelligent stories that the world needs now. One problem: This collection needs to be about ten times as long. These characters are human, human, human. They navigate in times that are increasingly disconcerting. They triumph and/or fail. I don’t know when I last read a collection of stories that made me think, ‘Yes! Yes, yes, yes! Exactly.’”
And Diane Roberts, author of Tribal: College Football and the Secret Heart of America said, “From the guys who faked the moon landing to what really went down in the Garden of Eden back in the day, Katie Burgess’s sly and sharp stories take you on a trip through the secret soul of America. Her prose shines like polished steel and cuts like an obsidian blade. She’s as funny as David Sedaris and twice as bold, giving God editorial advice and taking down the college industrial complex. Burgess is a writer on her way up. Read her now and be cooler than your friends!”
Katie Burgess holds a PhD in creative writing from Florida State and is editor-in-chief of Emrys Journal. Her writing has appeared in The Rumpus, New Orleans Review, SmokeLong Quarterly, and Reductress, among others. Her essay, “Rahab’s Thread,” was listed as “notable” in Best American Essays 2014 and was anthologized in Southern Sin: True Stories of the Sultry South and Women Behaving Badly (In Fact Books).
Download Wind on the Moon for free today!
and familiar tales to distill the most complex family dynamics: a daughter reckons with her mother meeting her lover in the language of a math textbook. Adam and Eve become a husband and wife who ‘always did encourage each other’s bad behavior.’ In the final story, the act of writing conflates with the creation of the universe, our narrator critiquing the work of a god: ‘I liked how in your first draft everything revolved around the Earth. That makes a lot more sense if the people there are going to be important.’ And Burgess shows us the importance of all people, encouraging empathy and the desire to get to know every character, every person, no matter how insignificant they may seem at first. Burgess writes with an honesty so clear it aches. Wind on the Moon is one of those books you can’t wait to share with everyone you love.”