Fiction. REQUIEM by Teresa Carmody is a "folk opera, a lament for the unexamined life," writes editor and author David Ulin in his Introduction. In this short collection of fiction, a lonely man plainchants for the waitress he once stalked, a sonless father serenades a fatherless son, and a bereft family gathers to bury a parent, providing an aching chorus of what is left. Carmody uses Biblical language to pierce the callous and bruised souls of these lost, and sometimes found, small-town Michiganders. In her raw spare stories, Carmody creates, says novelist, essayist and poet Carol Muske-Dukes, "a voice out of the backyard burning bush, a Midwest scriptural mist: frank, fierce and fidgety, and most emphatically her own."

Author City: LOS ANGELES, CA USA

Teresa Carmody's work has appeared in PoetsWest, Stolen Purse, Roar: Women's Studies Journal, and 4th Street. She holds an M.F.A. in creative writing from Antioch University, Los Angeles. She lives in Los Angeles, where she is the editor of Les Figues Press.