Winner of the Ploughshares John C. Zacharis First Book Award 2015
Stories in The Missing Woman circle around women who are either literally missing – a mother in rehab, a daughter never born – or who are missing some metaphorical piece of themselves.
A father tries to convince his uncompromising, anorexic daughter to want to live, a single woman lures men to her bed only to abandon them, and a marriage is shaken by a search party for a woman who’s disappeared. Burns asks questions about balance – safety with adventure – dreams with practicality – grief with joy – and challenges the reader to take a journey, make choices...
'Beautiful, memorable stories, artfully nuanced, boldly honest.'
Joanna Scott
'These stories explore the complex harmonies within real imperfect relationships, revealing moments in a life when a carefully held balance shifts and, imperceptibly, that life is changed.'
Philip Gross
Carole Burns is an author and lecturer who lives in Cardiff. Her book based on interviews with writers, Off the Page: Writers Talk About Beginnings, Endings and Everything in Between, was published by Norton in 2008; she regularly interviews authors and reviews books for The Washington Post. She has been shortlisted for the Bridport Prize in Short Fiction in 2012, 2013 and 2014, and awarded the MaryRoberts Rinehart Award in Fiction. Her stories have appeared in Ploughshares, Puerto del Sol, Folio and Other Voices. Burns is Head of Creative Writing at the University of Southampton and a co-organiser of XX Women’s Writing Festival. She is also a co-founder of the National Flash Fiction Day project Imagistic. The Missing Woman is her first collection of stories. www.caroleburns.com