Fiction

An Orchard in the Street

This collection of brief fictions by award-winning author Reginald Gibbons explores human experience and memory in ordinary settings—city apartments, rural roads, soap operas, and juvenile court—as a way to understand the depths of thought and feeling in our everyday encounters. These narrative meditations explode with imagery, looking and listening deeply into our everyday experience—the extraordinary within the ordinary, the impossible within the possible.

Praise for the collection

“What I most admire about this book by Reginald Gibbons is how it demonstrates what is, for me, most truly innovative about the short prose form—that is, not merely the strategies of the form itself, but where these unpredictable pieces can take you. Through their lens, Gibbons has arrived at what seems an effortless emotional directness and a voice that is extraordinary for its intense intimacy.” —Stuart Dybek

“Whether they deftly portray intimate moments of family life or the acute notations of a walker in the raw city, these brief pieces begin with the allure of a story. But what lingers with even greater force is the contemplative mind at work here, a mind which turns itself, by virtue of its pure attention, into a wise and generous heart. I read these pieces slowly, not because they are ‘difficult’ (they’re too immediate for that), but just glad to let each one radiate.” —Patricia Hampl

© BOA Editions, Ltd. 2017

FormatPaperback

Publication DateOctober 10, 2017

ISBN978-1-942683-49-0

$16.95

About the Author

Reginald Gibbons is the author of An Orchard in the Street (BOA Editions, Fall 2017), 10 books of poems, the novel Sweetbitter, translations of ancient Greek and modern Spanish and Mexican poetry, and other works. His collection Creatures of a Day was a Finalist in Poetry for the National Book Award. He has won fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Center for Hellenic Studies; as well as a number of book awards, including the Anisfield-Wolf Award for Sweetbitter. Born and raised in Houston, TX, he studied at Princeton University, Stanford University, and in Spain, and taught at Princeton, Rutgers University, and Columbia University. He now lives in Evanston, IL, where he served as the editor of TriQuarterly Magazine for 16 years, and is a Frances Hooper Professor of Arts and Humanities at Northwestern University.