Kirk Wilson & Chaitali Sen Reading

A New Race of Men from Heaven is a collection of stories about characters who wander but are never truly lost. A lonely man on a business trip finds himself in the middle of a search party for a missing boy; a grieving widow leaves India to join family in the United States; a writer finds renewed success when an unknown imposter begins publishing under his identity. In these quiet yet deeply knowing stories of migration, power, and longing, A New Race of Men from Heaven offers us, above all else, stories of enduring love and hope.

Chaitali Sen is the author of the novel The Pathless Sky and the forthcoming short story collection A New Race of Men from Heaven, which was selected by Danielle Evans as the winner of the Mary McCarthy Prize in Short Fiction. Her short stories and essays have appeared in Boulevard, Catapult, Colorado Review, Ecotone, Los Angeles Review of Books, New England Review, New Ohio Review, Shenandoah, and many other publications.

Kirk Wilson’s books include the story collection Out of Season, the poetry collection Songbox, the poetry chapbook The Early Word, and Unsolved, a nonfiction crime study published in six editions in the US and UK. Kirk’s fiction, nonfiction, and poetry are widely published in literary journals and anthologies. His awards include a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship, the Elixir Press Fiction Award, the Trio House Press Trio Award, Editor’s Awards and other prizes in all three genres, and two Pushcart nominations. Kirk’s website is www.KirkWilsonBooks.com.

Here’s how Karen Russell, author of Orange World and Swamplandia!, sums up Out of Season:

“I am a long-time fan of Kirk Wilson's darkly funny, slyly philosophical, and wonderfully surprising stories, each of which finds its own precise, fresh language to orbit a mystery. Emily Dickinson rises again from a box labeled ‘Inflatable Immortals,’ a hard-drinking nun hears confessions, Shirley Temple routes her sparkling undead voice through cemetery light, and a goat's uncanny eye reveals how much exists ‘outside the little circus ring of things you can perceive.’ That just scratches the surface of what Wilson can make live with his perfectly tuned sentences. This is pure pleasure from a uniquely gifted writer.”