We Agreed to Meet Just Here

by Scott Blackwood

Overview

Fiction. Winner of the 2007 AWP Award for the Novel. Robert Eversz, Judge. "WE AGREED TO MEET JUST HERE is a lyrical mystery about disappearance, told in precise and luminous prose. A young lifeguard in an Austin suburb vanishes one night while returning from a screening of The Third Man. A doctor, ill with cancer, goes missing from his home, and is later seen, bearded and ragged, wandering the aisles of a grocery store. A car is stolen, the unseen consequences tragic. One child is given up to adoption, another is lost up a tree. The absences are so keenly felt, in the drifting lucidity of the author's sentences, that every reappearance reads like a small miracle"--Robert Eversz.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781930974807
Publisher:	New Issues Poetry and Prose
Publication date:	02/01/2009
Series:	Awp Award for the Novel
Pages:	164
Product dimensions:	5.30(w) x 8.20(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

SCOTT BLACKWOOD grew up in Texas. His award-winning collection of stories, In the Shadow of Our House, was published by SMU Press in 2001. His fiction has appeared in The Gettysburg Review, Boston Review, and Southwest Review, and the title story from his collection is featured on the New York Times Book Review’s "First Chapters" website. Blackwood has won a Dobie Paisano Fellowship, two Texas Commission on the Arts Fellowships, and twice been nominated for the Pushcart Prize. He is an Assistant Professor of English and Director of the MFA Creative Writing Program at Roosevelt University in Chicago.

What People are Saying About This

Robert Eversz

“We Agreed to Meet Just Here is a lyrical mystery about disappearance, told in precise and luminous prose. A young lifeguard in an Austin suburb vanishes one night while returning from a screening of The Third Man. A doctor, ill with cancer, goes missing from his home, and is later seen, bearded and ragged, wandering the aisles of a grocery store. A car is stolen, the unseen consequences tragic. One child is given up to adoption, another is lost up a tree. The absences are so keenly felt, in the drifting lucidity of the author’s sentences, that every reappearance reads like a small miracle.”

Editorial Reviews

We Agreed to Meet Just Here is not a story about redemption, and it is not a story about making peace and meaning out of terrible events. Instead, this lyrical portrait of mystery and longing functions like a piece of music—a sad piece of music that gives voice to a yearning that is both general and specific. The narrative voice alternates between the songs of soloists and the swell of the full choir.”—Jaspar Lepak, Rain Taxi Review of Books

From the Publisher