Abby Frucht

Abby Frucht's new collection of stories, THE BELL AT THE END OF A ROPE, is new from Narrative Library. Her first collection, FRUIT OF THE MONTH (University of Iowa Press), won the Iowa Short Fiction Prize for 1987, and was followed by five novels, including SNAP (Ticknor & Fields), LICORICE (Graywolf), ARE YOU MINE? (Grove), LIFE BEFORE DEATH (Scribner), and POLLY’S GHOST (Scribner). The recipient of two National Endowment for the Arts Fellowships, a New Voices Award from Quality Paperback Book Club, and several citations for notable books from The New York Times,, Abby won the Kay W. Levin Short non-fiction prize from the Council for Wisconsin Writers, was included in Dzanc Books' Best of the Web 2008, and looks forward to seeing her novels and stories in e-book form with Dzanc Books' new rEprint series. A committed mentor who has taught for sixteen years in the MFA in Writing Program at Vermont College of Fine Arts, she lives in Wisconsin where she is collaborating on a new novel with her friend and colleague, the novelist and memoirist Laurie Alberts. Like Ms. Frucht’s other works, her new stories and other writings approach dark events via a playful persective, exploring the mysterious, surreal, and eccentric aspects of our lives and their many ways of ending.