About this item
"Mark Mayer writes with a humorous, wistful elegance. His stories are singular, as detached and intimate as dreaming." --Marilynne RobinsonWelcome to the sublime circus of Mark Mayer's Michener-Copernicus-winning debut, Aerialists, a fiercely inventive collection of nine stories in which classic carnival characters become ordinary misfits seeking grandeur in a lonely world. Under the luminous tent of Mayer's prose, we see P.T. Barnum's caravan remade: A young misogynist finds a confidante in a cable-TV strongwoman. A realtor for the one percent invokes his inner murder clown. A skin-and-bones mathematician and his bearded wife plot revolution. A friendless peach farmer holds a funeral for a beloved elephant. And a model-train hobbyist prepares to throw his miniature world in the trash.
About the Author
Mark Mayer has an MFA from the Iowa Writers' Workshop, where he was a Teaching-Writing Fellow. From 2012 to 2014, he lived at Cornell College's Center for the Literary Arts as the Robert P. Dana Emerging Writer. His first book, AERIALISTS, won the Michener-Copernicus Prize and is forthcoming from Bloomsbury USA. He lives in Denver, Colorado with the poet Ashley Colley.www.markgmayer.comwww.twitter.com/markgmayerwww.instagram.com/mark.g.mayer/
