A La Carte
Short Stories that Stir the Foodie in All of Us
A 2010 MSR Short Fiction Anthology
Edited by S. Craig Renfroe, Jr.
ISBN: 978-1-59948-251-4, cover price $14.95

Back to the MSR Online Bookstore

Contributors / Introduction

Introduction

Sex is good, but not as good as fresh, sweet corn.--Garrison Keillor

 

There once was a myth where humans did not need food--they had no desire to eat or drink, no concept of it even. But the gods looked down and saw that too many people were very happy and too many were very sad. So the gods gave humans the hunger to feed, and then everyone was moment by moment both happy and sad.

We gorge ourselves on food and we get fat; we fear food and we become anorexic. Foodies look down their noses and picky eaters push aside their plates. Food is in our religions. Food is in our travels. Food is in our bedrooms. In short, food is complicated. The writers collected here know this and use this insight to stunning effect.

These stories glory in and reveal the terror of our food issues. They explore the way the language of food shapes our lives. We have literary experiments in recipe. We have the promise of wonton soup and sex. We have views into the minds distorted by our crazy fructose high and body shame culture, pushing us to the extremes of the overeaters and the starvation artists. We see a marriage through orange Oreos. And of course, we have cheese. Whether it's the gothic disgust and beauty of the long story "Cube Steak" or the comic heart of the flash fiction "Stefan's Bacon & Molasses Cookies," we have something for any palette and any appetite.

Reader, frankly you look famished. We have set the plate--you have only to feast.

--S. Craig Renfroe Jr., Editor, A La Carte

 

CONTRIBUTORS

 

Ted Chiles, Santa Barbara, CA
Ted Chiles' stories and nonfiction have appeared or are forthcoming in several literary journals including The City Hour, Moon City Review, Vestal Review, The Anemone Sidecar, seven letter words quarterly, and Waccamaw. Four of his stories were adapted and performed at the New Short Fiction Series in Los Angeles in September 2007. His story "Knife" won the 2008 Midnight Sun Fiction Contest at Permafrost. A passionate foodie and aspiring wine collector, he lives with a poet and three cats and is also the proud father of two adopted avocado trees. Interested readers can contact him at tchiles@mac.com.

 

David Erlewine, Annapolis, MD

Hugh Fox, East Lansing, MI
Reaching the end of the line (78), Fox has 110 published books, mostly poetry, but also a book on French film, a critical studies of Bukowski, Lifshin, Charles Potts, etc., novels, and four books on pre-Columbian archaeology. He has a Ph.D. in American Literature and taught for some fifty years at the University of Illinois, Loyola University in Los Angeles, the Instituto Pedagogico in Caracas, the University of Hermosillo in Mexico, the University of Santa Catarina in Brazil, and Michigan State University. He is currently writing poetry and criticism and pushing to get his 34 unpublished novels into print.

 

Molly Gaudry, Philadelphia, PA
Molly Gaudry is the author of the verse novel We Take Me Apart (Mud Luscious, 2009) and the editor of Tell: An Anthology of Expository Narrative (Flatmancrooked, 2010). She edits Willows Wept Press and Willows Wept Review, co-edits Twelve Stories, and is an associate editor for Keyhole Magazine. She is also a contributor to the arts and culture site, Big Other. Find her online at mollygaudry.blogspot.com.

 

Kathie Giorgio, Waukesha, WI
Kathie Giorgio's first novel, "The Home For Wayward Clocks," is forthcoming from Main Street Rag Publishing Company. Her story, "Harvest," appeared in a previous MSR anthology, Dots on a Map. Her work has also appeared in anthologies by Papier Mache Press, Edition Bibliotekos, and Susurrus Press. Stories have appeared in many literary magazines, including Harpur Palate, Fiction International, Dos Passos Review, Ars Medica, Thema, CutThroat, The Pedestal, Bayou, Eclipse, Potomac Review, Arabesques Review, Oyez Review, Jabberwock Review, Karamu Review, Bellowing Ark, Midway Journal, The Externalist, in the premier issue of SLAB and in the premier issue of Broken Bridge Review. She has been the featured author in Women Writers' ezine. Kathie has been nominated for the Million Writer Award and for the Best of the Net Anthology. She is the director and founder of AllWriters' Workplace & Workshop, a creative writing studio.

 

Russell Helms, Richmond, KY
Russell Helms coordinates the MFA Program at Eastern Kentucky University and is the managing editor for Jelly Bucket. His background is in pizza delivery, healthcare, and publishing. His stories have appeared in antiTHESIS, Qarrtsiluni, and others. He enjoys everything and nothing.

 

 

 

 

 

Ann Hillesland, Mountain View, CA
Ann Hillesland's fiction has been published in literary journals including Open City, North Dakota Quarterly, The Los Angeles Review, SmokeLong Quarterly, NANO Fiction, Bellowing Ark, Going Down Swinging, The MacGuffin, and Red Wheelbarrow. She is a graduate of the MFA program at Queens University of Charlotte.

 

 

 

 

Carol K. Howell, DeKalb, IL
Carol K. Howell is a 1985 graduate of the Iowa Writers' Workshop. She has published about 50 stories in literary magazines, most recently including Epoch, Cimarron Review, Arts & Letters, and The Greensboro Review. Her novella, The Empty Bowl, won first prize in Carpe Articulum's novella contest and was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Another story, "Blood and Milk," which appears in the Spring 2010 issue of North Dakota Quarterly, has also been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and was selected for inclusion in New Stories from the Midwest, an anthology to be published by Ohio University Press. For twenty-six years she taught writing at the University of Pittsburgh, the University of Iowa, and Syracuse University. Currently, she runs an informal writing group in DeKalb, Illinois, where she writes full-time.

 

Jac Jemc, Chicago, IL
Jac Jemc lives in Chicago. She is the author of two forthcoming titles: This Stranger She'd Invited In (Greying Ghost Press 2010) and My Only Wife (Dzanc 2012). She blogs her rejections at jacjemc.wordpress.com.

 

 

 

 

Jason Jordan, New Albany, IN
Jason Jordan holds an MFA from Chatham University. His forthcoming books are Cloud and Other Stories (Six Gallery Press, 2010) and Powering the Devil's Circus: Redux (Six Gallery Press, 2010). His prose has appeared online and in print in numerous magazines, including, most recently, THE2NDHAND, The Broken Plate, Moon Milk Review, The Northville Review, Stumble Magazine, Writers' Bloc (Rutgers), and The Wrong Tree Review. His work's forthcoming in W. W. Norton's Hint Fiction: An Anthology of Stories in 25 Words or Fewer. Additionally, he's Editor-in-Chief of decomP, accessible at www.decompmagazine.com. You can visit him at his blog at poweringthedevilscircus.blogspot.com.

 

Michael Kardos, Starkville, MS
Michael Kardos is the author of the story collection One Last Good Time, forthcoming in 2011. His short stories have appeared in The Southern Review, Crazyhorse, Prairie Schooner, Gulf Coast, Blackbird, Pleiades, The Florida Review, and many other magazines. One of his stories is listed as a Distinguished Story of 2009 in the anthology Best American Short Stories. He grew up on the Jersey Shore and currently lives in Starkville, Mississippi, where he co-directs the creative writing program at Mississippi State University. His website is www.michaelkardos.com

 

 

Letitia L. Moffitt, Champaign, IL.
Letitia Moffitt’s fiction, creative nonfiction, and poetry has been published in a number of literary journals including Black Warrior Review, Aux Arc Review, Jabberwock Review, Coe Review, The MacGuffin, and Dos Passos Review, and her recently completed short story collection has been a finalist for prizes from Sol Books, Livingston Press, and Black Lawrence Press. She received a doctoral degree in English and creative writing from Binghamton University in New York, and she currently teaches creative writing as an assistant professor at Eastern Illinois University.

 

Joseph R. Quinlan, Asheville, NC
Originally from Brooklyn NY, Joseph R. Quinlan lives and works in Asheville NC. He holds a BA in literature from the University of North Carolina at Asheville. His work has appeared in Zahir, Space and Time, and The Leading Edge.

 

 

 

 

Mary McLaughlin Slechta, Syracuse, NY.
Mary McLaughlin Slechta'a stories and poetry have appeared in journals, zines, and anthologies such as Gihon River Review, The Slab, and Pedestal. In the past year she was included in Rattle's "Tribute to African American Poets," as well as the Uphook Press anthology, You Say. Say. She's the author of Wreckage on a Watery Moon (FootHills) and two chapbooks. An associate editor with The Comstock Review, she lives in Syracuse, New York.

 

 

Nicole Louise Reid, Newburgh, IN.
Nicole Louise Reid is the author of the novel In the Breeze of Passing Things (MacAdam/Cage) and fiction chapbook Girls (RockSaw Press). Her stories have appeared in Sweet, The Southern Review, Quarterly West, Meridian, Black Warrior Review, Confrontation, turnrow, Crab Orchard Review, and Grain Magazine. She is recipient of the Willamette Award in Fiction, and has placed in Santa Fe Writers Project Literary Awards, Press 53 Open Awards, Pirate's Alley William Faulkner Short Story Competition, the F. Scott Fitzgerald Literary Society, and Glimmer Train. She teaches creative writing at the University of Southern Indiana, where she is fiction editor of Southern Indiana Review and editor of RopeWalk Press, and directs the RopeWalk Visiting Writers Reading Series.

 

Ben Tanzer, Chicago, IL
Ben Tanzer writes and is the author of the novels Lucky Man and Most Likely You Go Your Way and I'll Go Mine, as well as, the short story collection Repetition Patterns. He also blogs at This Blog Will Change Your Life (bentanzer.blogspot.com/) and oversees This Zine Will Change Your Life (thiszinewillchangeyourlife.blogspot.com/) the centerpiece of his vast, albeit faux media empire. He is currently watching Sports Center, but upon his deathbed, he will receive total consciousness. So, he's got that going for him. Which is nice.

 

 

Eric Vrooman, Minneapolis, MN
Eric Vrooman received an MFA in Fiction Writing at UNC-Wilmington and has since participated in the New York State Summer Writers Institute and Bread Loaf. His work can be found in The Kenyon Review, The Cream City Review, Passages North, Monkeybicycle, Hobart, Twelve Stories, and Ninth Letter. He teaches at The Loft Literary Center and has also taught at Macalester College, Tulane University, and Gustavus Adolphus College. With the help of a 2010 Minnesota State Arts Board Artist Initiative Grant and a SASE/Jerome Award, he is writing a collection of nontraditional form fiction.