Miriam Gershow

Miriam Gershow is the author of Closer, Survival Tips: Stories and The Local News. Her writing is featured in The Georgia Review, Gulf Coast, and Black Warrior Review, among other journals. She is the recipient of a Fiction Fellowship from the Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing, an Oregon Literary Fellowship, and is a two-time finalist for the Oregon Book Award. Gershow is the organizer of “100 Notable Small Press Books,” a curated list of the year’s recommended books from independent publishers.

Recently I asked the author about what she was reading. Gershow's reply:

I found a copy of Gin Phillip’s Fierce Kingdom at the library book sale this year. I’d been interested when this first came out eight years ago, but I was too early into parenting to be able to stomach the story of a woman trapped with her four-year-old son at the zoo during an active shooter situation. I’m so glad I came back to it: it was harrowing, propulsive, and so well-rendered up to the very last note. It’s a story of motherhood at its most desperate, though the writing is so sharp and lively, you’re never entirely cowed by the desperation. Phillip’s keeps the story aloft in unimaginable circumstances.

I’m also in the middle of spearheading 100 Notable Small Press Books 2025, a project of 50+ volunteer reviewers reading and recommending titles across genres and presses. The final list will be published in LitHub in November. In the meantime, I’m on a small press reading kick. Currently I’m rereading Scott Nadelson’s Trust Me (Forest Avenue Press) for an event we’re doing together on how we imagine Oregon in our work. Scott’s version of Oregon is so tender and mossy and mushroom-capped, you can see it and smell it in every page. His work makes you want to snug your fleece cap tighter around your head and pull up your smart wool socks. It’s pretty close to the opposite of how I write about place - I mostly approach it through the people and the sociological updrafts and winds.

And finally I’m reading my friend Heather Ryan’s essay collection in progress. Bookmark Heather’s name; her essay, "Ballistic Trajectory," which anchors her collection, is one of the most affecting essays I’ve read in years: unflinching and heartbreaking about so many things, including institutional failures of academia, the limits of teaching, and how, years later, the progress of MeToo is no progress at all. It’s going to blow everyone’s ears back when it’s published.

Visit Miriam Gershow's website.

The Page 69 Test: The Local News.

Q&A with Miriam Gershow.

--Marshal Zeringue