What It Might Feel Like to Hope

A short story collection by Dorene O’Brien

Independent Publisher Book Awards – Gold Medal Winner – Short Fiction

American Book Fest’s American Fiction Award – Finalist – Short Story

 

What It Might Feel Like to Hope, the second collection from award-winning author Dorene O’Brien, is a masterful and eclectic mix of stories that consider the infinitely powerful, and equally naïve and damning force that is human hope. A couple tries to come to terms with one another as they travel west in the uncomfortable twilight of their youth; a mortician and an idealistic novelist spar about the true nature of death; an aspiring author hopes to impress Tom Hanks with zombies; a tarot reader deals out the future of Detroit. Showcasing her diverse talents, O’Brien offers a panoply of characters and settings that dwell beyond the borders of certainty, in a place where all that has been left to them is an inkling of possibility upon which they must place all their hopes. These stories offer a variety of tones, forms, and themes in which O’Brien displays an amazing range and control of her craft, all while exploring the essential nature of humanity with nuance, empathy, and at times a touch of skepticism.

Read Dorene O’Brien’s interview on the Baoblog.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Dorene O’Brien is a Detroit-based writer and teacher whose stories have won the Red Rock Review Mark Twain Award for Short Fiction, the Chicago Tribune Nelson Algren Award, the New Millennium Writings Fiction Prize, and the Wind Fiction Prize. Her story, “#12 Dagwood on Rye,” was chosen by writer and fiction judge Jim Crace from among 4,000 entries as first-place winner of the international Bridport Prize. She has earned fellowships from the NEA and the Vermont Studio Center. Her stories have been nominated for two Pushcart prizes, have been published in special Kindle editions and have appeared in The Best of Carve Magazine. Her work also appears in Madison Review, Short Story Review, The Republic of Letters, Southern Humanities Review, Detroit Noir, Montreal Review, Passages North, Baltimore Review, Cimarron Review, and others. Voices of the Lost and Found, her first fiction collection, was a finalist for the Drake Emerging Writer Award and won the USA Best Book Award for Short Fiction. In 2019, her collection What It Might Feel Like to Hope won the Gold Medal from Independent Publisher Book Awards.

Praise for Dorene O’Brien

“Dorene O’Brien’s stories operate on a different plane and dimension of realism–flesh and blood yet dipped in a neon wash perhaps. At once a scientist of sensory details and a heartfelt observer of the intricacies of the human psyche, O’Brien’s prose possesses a particular cinema that will not just stay in your mind but your gut as well.”

“What It Might Feel like to Hope makes the reader shudder with recognition of lives crossing and merging with one another. The final story of the collection closes the circle beautifully, making us feel that out of the most circumscribed conditions, hope can rise.”

“O’Brien’s magical new collection of short fiction quickly transports readers beyond the bones of its structure—the deftly-crafted plots, striking characterizations and clever, lyrical prose—to places of genuine wonder.”

“A wondrous journey that is at times laugh-out-loud humorous, at times heartbreaking, but always compelling and magnificent in its authenticity.”

Book Details

Title: What It Might Feel Like to Hope

Author: Dorene O’Brien

Publication Date: February 12, 2019

ISBN: 978-1-936097-21-0

Red Ochre Edition

$16.95

Dist. by Publishers Group West
www.pgw.com, 800-788-2123

Available at your favorite local bookstore, on Indiebound.com, or from Baobab Press affiliate Sundance Books and Music

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