Everything, Then and Since by Michael Parker

Description

Whether ferrying slowly across an eastern North Carolina river or reaching out to touch a train that’s not about to stop, the wanderers in these stories yearn for what they can’t quite grasp. It might be what they’ve left behind or what lies ahead, but whatever it is, it won’t leave them alone. Regret and marvel, trouble and love—it’s Everything, Then and Since.

“These stories are miracles of concision. And, like all enduring stories, there is nothing short about them. Each of these continues after the last period. Each brief piece comprises a universe unto itself full of blood and heart and dirt and and sorrow and moments of joy so hard one your hands will tremble. Do me a favor? Read Everything, Then and Since slow. Revel in the cadence of these sentences, and dive headlong into this motley collection of actual lives on the page. You won’t come out the same.” —Peter Orner

“It is as if Michael Parker, one of the most prolific, skilled and classy of southern novelists, (If You Want Me to Stay) has created a new gene in Everything Then and Since. In these short stories the reader is drawn into a world with many viewpoints, mostly southern, all supposedly simple. Each is as subversive as it is elusive. Each is deft and witty. Each is old and young at different times and each feels personal.  The affect leaves the reader panting. It could be the book of a trickster, but it’s not, though addictive, sad or funny. You have one reaction: you’ve got to fast forward to read the next story. It’s as if you were on some unknown, reckless path to find out what life means through his characters. Why is a short story doing this to you? You don’t care. You’re laughing, or wondering, or sad. You recognize the character and you’re compelled to turn the page to find the what and the why. It’s all in the when though, and the When never stops.” —Daphne Athas

“Twenty-three stories are packed into this volume of less than 100 pages. Many are barely two pages long. Yet there’s nothing skimpy about Parker’s work. His prose is dense and intensely focused — on the verge of poetry almost.” —Ben Steelman, Wilmington Star News

Michael Parker

Michael Parker is the author of eight novels – Hello Down There, Towns Without Rivers, Virginia Lovers, If You Want Me To Stay, The Watery Part of the World, All I Have In This World, Prairie Fever, and I Am the Light of This World–and three collections of stories, The Geographical Cure, Don’t Make Me Stop Now and Everything, Then and Since. His short fiction and nonfiction have appeared in numerous publications, including Five Points, the Georgia Review, The Southwest Review, the Washington Post, the New York Times, Oxford American, New England Review, Trail Runner, Runner’s World and Men’s Journal. He has received fellowships in fiction from the North Carolina Arts Council and the National Endowment for the Arts, as well as the Hobson Award for Arts and Letters, the North Carolina Award for Literature and the 2020 Thomas Wolfe Prize. His work has been anthologized in the Pushcart and New Stories from the South anthologies, and he is a three-time winner of the O.Henry Award for short fiction. For nearly thirty years, he taught in the MFA Writing Program at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. Since 2009 he has been on the faculty of the Warren Wilson Program for Writers. He lives in Austin, Texas.