West Virginia University Press is publishing A Room of Rain by Gary Fincke, a finalist for the 2014 Paterson Fiction Prize.

Madison Smartt Bell, author of All Soul’s Rising, calls A Room of Rain, “A group of seamless short stories, by an old master of the form.”

Cary Holladay, author of The Deer in the Mirror, says “This glorious collection shows Fincke at the peak of his powers — funny, gritty, provocative.”

The narratives throughout Gary Fincke’s sixth collection of short stories contain newsworthy events that are chronicled secondhand: the shooting of a policeman, the murder of a house flipper, the firing of a teacher for punching a violent student, the accidental drowning of a gay man in a flood, and a fire somewhat accidently set by a juvenile smoker in a school.

Despite these surprising events, the narrator of each story is an ordinary person caught up in the action but preoccupied by other things, whether zombie movies, collecting unusual words, the oddity of other people’s sexual habits, or what to do in retirement.

These shocking incidents become both central and peripheral to the narrative, as Fincke portrays the fluctuating emotions and self-protective reflections of fathers, sons and husbands, creating a world where individuals rarely understand each other, yet still arrive at moments of compassion, tolerance, perseverance and familial love.

Fincke is the Charles Degenstein Professor of English and Creative Writing at Susquehanna University. Winner of the 2003 Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction, the 2003 The Ohio State University Press/The Journal Award in Poetry, and the 2010 Stephen F. Austin Poetry Prize for recent collections. He has published twenty-six books of short fiction, poetry, and nonfiction as well as the novel How Blasphemy Sounds to God. He is the author of The Proper Words for Sin, a finalist for the 2014 Paterson Fiction Prize.

More praise for A Room of Rain:

“Gary Fincke is one of the most reliable and prolific writers out there. Fincke flat out knows how to write,” said Jim Daniels, author of Eight Mile High and other collections.

“This collection is provocative yet subtle; gritty yet humorous. These stories continue to stick with me long after closing the book, beautifully rendered reminders of what we each hold untold,” said Genevieve Shifke Ali, Independent Publisher.

To order this book, visit wvupress.com, phone (800) 621-2736, or visit a local bookstore. All WVU Press books are available for purchase on our website, with online vendors, and at bookstores. For updates on books and events, follow WVU Press on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and Pinterest or join our mailing list on wvupress.com.

A Room of Rain by Gary Fincke
March 2015/ 200pp
PB 978-1-940425-20-7: $16.99
eBook 978-1-940425-22-1: $16.99

-WVU-

af/2/26/15

CONTACT: Abby Freeland, Marketing Manager, WVU Press
304 293-6188, abby.freeland@mail.wvu.edu

Follow @WVUToday on Twitter.