Miami University Press Novella Prize winner H.C. Gildfind will read from her novella, BORN SLEEPING. Writer and contest final judge Joe Squance will provide an introduction.
ABOUT THE BOOK:
By recounting one woman's real-time witnessing of a couple's experience of stillbirth, Born Sleeping explores the ambivalence that lies at the heart of human relationships, the difficulty of comprehending others' realities, the voyeurism of being on the outside of trauma and the disturbingly cool, detached eye of the writer.
Gildfind’s novella is visceral, exhilarating and unsettling. Emotions are laid bare in all their ugly thrashing glory: live mercurial animals that for all their maudlin volatility manage to steer clear of heartbreak cliché and navel-gazing mind-anguish, instead manifesting materially and explicitly in the body and the environment. Fear is an 'iris spontaneously propelled inwards', memories grow 'like bones and hair and nails', and 'the nursery air is swollen with expectant waiting 'like the body of the mother.
— Grace Yee
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
H.C. Gildfind is a writer of fiction, book reviews and essays that have been published online and internationally. Gildfind has also researched Australian interwar history and literature, and was awarded a PhD from The University of Melbourne in 2012.
