Laura Kalpakian

Fair Augusto

FAIR AUGUSTO AND OTHER STORIES, Laura Kalpakian’s first collection of short fiction shows remarkable breadth and depth. The settings, moods, themes and characters who inhabit these stories display enviable artistic range. “Hunters in the Fields of August” follows the fates and fortunes of a family of Italian Jews fleeing Mussolini. “Veteran’s Day” (winner of the Stand International Short Fiction Competition) chronicles a disturbed veteran’s return to his hometown. The title piece explores a lost lover whose suicide reverberates across lives and continents. Winner of the Pen West Best Short Fiction, 1987, these are stories to savor.

“This fine collection of short fiction is filled with rich depictions of human frailty and resilience, and characters who must relinquish their passionate attachments–whether it be to a marriage or a memory.” MS MAGAZINE

Fair Augusto & Other Stories

“[Memory into Memoir’s] chapters each focus on a different element of craft in creative nonfiction and are an effective mix of context, prompts, and illuminating excerpts with follow-up analysis. While that formula has been used in other texts. . . none were so engaging to me as Kalpakian’s. In the middle of chapters I wanted to pause and work on drafts or record new ideas she’d provoked.”

~Whitney Jacobson, Split Rock Review

“An exceptionally comprehensive and thoroughly ‘user friendly’ in style, organization and presentation, “Memory into Memoir:  A Writer’s Handbook” is an ideal and unreservedly recommended addition to community library, college and university library Writing/Publishing collections.  For aspiring and experienced writers alike.”

~The Midwest Book Review

“Kalpakian encourages writers to trust their instincts and embrace ‘not just the way things happened, but the way the writer thinks they happened.’ “

~Poets & Writers

“She’s so entertaining a writer that it takes a while to realize how smart she is.”

~The New Yorker

“She’s so entertaining a writer that it takes a while to realize how smart she is.”

~The New Yorker

“Her characters change and grow, and the story, instead of being reduced to a central issue, develops out of one.”

~Times Literary Supplement (London)

“Kalpakian can make 70 lines just as enduring as their equal in pages. And her writing is clearly inspired by a fire in the belly.”

~Bloomsbury Review

“Here we have a novel of great strength and scope with the impact and exhaustive character studies of the work of Henry James or Saul Bellow.”

~West Coast Review of Books

“In this step-by-step guide, the award-winning novelist and memoirist walks experienced and new writers alike through the challenges of writing a memoir”

~Poets & Writers

Also By Laura

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laura kalpakian at book signing

About Laura

Laura Kalpakian was nominated for the prestigious International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award for American Cookery. She won a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, a Pushcart Prize, the Pacific Northwest Booksellers’ Award (twice), the Anahid Award for an American writer of Armenian descent, the PEN West Award, and the Stand International Short Fiction Competition. She has had residencies at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, Montalvo Center for the Arts, and Hawthornden Castle in Scotland. She is the author of sixteen novels, and four collections, and over a hundred stories published in collections, anthologies, literary journals and magazines in the USA and the UK.

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