SHORT FICTION
GRIND
Stories
"This is prime American fiction—tough, generous, and open–eyed."
—ALYSON HAGY, author of Boleto
Mark Maynard’s debut collection of linked short stories examines the characters of a town whose means and meanings are eroding away. In Grind, a homeless man wins the jackpot—and a large stack of pancakes (“Jackpot”); a prison inmate trains a horse toward life beyond the gates (“Penned”); a truck driver with the IQ of a child drives his empty rig up and down the interstate as an homage to his dead mother (“Deadheading”); a topless teen sunbathes on her roof as fighter planes careen overhead (“Sirens”); a grieving woman stores her breast milk behind the frozen peas (“Letdown”); and a pawnshop owner catalogues his wares by the natures of their violent pasts (“Trading Up”). In these stories, pleasure is cheap, heartbreak is a given, the past is dwindling away and the future is unsettlingly uncertain.
December 2012 | Short Fiction | 9781937226039 | 170 pp | $15.95
"In Grind, Maynard reveals a world the Nevada tourism board would rather you didn't see . . . A debut collection of stories that perfectly captures the seediness, desperation, and sense of loss permeating the hot desert world of Reno."
—SHELF AWARENESS
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
MARK MAYNARD is a writer, editor, and journalist who teaches at Truckee Meadows Community College. He is an editor for The Meadow literary journal and his work has appeared in Lunch Ticket, The Nottingham Review, and the 2012 anthology Tahoe Blues: Short Lit on Life at the Lake. Maynard is the recipient of the 2015 Nevada Writers Hall of Fame Silver Pen Award, and Grind was selected as the 2016-17 Nevada Reads book. His work has appeared in Reno News and Review and the Ploughshares “Literary Boroughs” blog, and is a contributor to The Films of Clint Eastwood: Critical Perspectives. He lives in Reno, Nevada, with his wife Molly and their five children.
PRAISE FOR GRIND
"Throughout the volume’s eight tenuously linked tales, lives and fortune are lost, and the city of Reno emerges as a locus of shattered souls. Maynard’s debut collection bursts with idiosyncratic characters . . . packs a strong emotional punch . . . is strangely entertaining."
—PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
“In Grind, Maynard reveals a world the Nevada tourism board would rather you didn’t see. . . . A debut collection of stories that perfectly captures the seediness, desperation and sense of loss permeating the hot desert world of Reno.”
—SHELF AWARENESS
“Mark Maynard’s Reno is so sleazily appealing, so filled with convict cowboys, wild horses, racing pilots, truckers, snow bums, eco-terrorists, tattoo conventions, pawnshops and jackpots that you emerge from reading Grind dazed by this author’s empathy for neglected quarters of humanity. You feel gritty all over—and more alive.”
—CAROLYN COOKE, author of Daughters of the Revolution
“Mark Maynard’s Grind is chock full of men and women who are desperate with want and full of spirit. Pawnbrokers. Truckers. Casino shills. Prison inmates. They’re all here, and they’re all gloriously alive. This is prime American fiction–-tough, generous, and open-eyed.”
—ALYSON HAGY, author of Boleto
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