Peter Orner is the author of the collections Esther Stories (Mariner 2001, Little, Brown 2013), a finalist for the PEN/Hemingway Award, and Last Car Over the Sagamore Bridge (Little, Brown 2013), and the novels The Second Coming of Mavala Shikongo (Little, Brown 2006), winner of the Bard Fiction Prize, and Love and Shame and Love (Little, Brown 2011). His stories have been anthologized in Best American Stories and he has twice been awarded a Pushcart Prize.Cedar City, Utah, 1974
Detroit, yeah, we lived there too for a while. My father wrote for the Free Press but he was restless and started freelancing, writing travel stories, which he despised. Break my neck so someone else can take a goddamn vacation? He’d take us with him. I remember thinking that Mount Rushmore looked...
Plaza Revolution, Mexico City, 6 a.m.
Teresa sells television antennas in the Zócalo. On her way to work she walks slowly through the mostly empty plaza and thinks of her sister who lives in a place called Ohio now. Her sister who was beautiful before she had children. She sends pictures. Teresa never had children herself but she...
