Miriam Gershow’s second book, SURVIVAL TIPS: STORIES, will be released in March 2024 from Propeller Books. The collection spans 20 years of her story writing career and includes three stories born in magical Cabin 6 in March 2022 (with my dear friend, Cai Emmons, next door in Cabin 5- * see below). Survival Tips follows characters through friendships, jobs, marriages, and grief as they stumble toward connection. A wife begins communicating to her husband via rebus puzzles. A new teacher confronts the parents of a disruptive student. A group of conference-goers join their guru in a sweat lodge. A woman shows up to her blind date in a Don’t Leave Me t-shirt. With wit and candor, these ten stories examine the ways we live, the mistakes we make, and the paths we take in hopes of delivering us to ourselves and each other. Click here to learn more about this project.
Miriam Gershow is the author of The Local News (Spiegel & Grau). Her short story collection, Survival Tips, is forthcoming from Propeller Books in 2024. Miriam’s short stories appear in The Georgia Review, Gulf Coast and Black Warrior Review, among other journals. Her flash fiction appears in anthologies from Alan Squire Books and Alternating Currents, as well as in Pithead Chapel, Had, and Variant Lit, where she is the inaugural winner of the Annual Pizza Prize. Her nonfiction appears in Salon, Craft Literary, and Heavy Feather Review. Her stories have been listed in the 100 Distinguished Stories of The Best American Short Stories, appear in the Robert Olen Butler Prize Stories, and have been nominated for Pushcart Prizes. Her novel was a finalist for the Oregon Book Award. Miriam is the recipient of a Fiction Fellowship from the Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing and an Oregon Literary Fellowship, as well as writing residencies at Playa, Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts, Hypatia-in-the-Woods, and Wildacres. She received her MFA from the University of Oregon, and has since taught fiction writing at the University of Wisconsin as well as descriptive writing to gifted high school students through Johns Hopkins University. She has taught writing to first-graders to retirees and everyone in between, and currently teaches at the University of Oregon. She lives in Eugene with her family, where she is perpetually working on her next
* Cai Emmons was a dear friend and firece supporter of PLAYA. She passed away in January this year enveloped by love. She also was an Awarded Residency at PLAYA many times over the years and we are honored that her love and friendaship graced the people and this place. Her brave, creative spirit will live on in the guests that visit here and also fall in love with the wild winds and drama of the landscape. To read more about Cai and her accomplishments, visit her website here.