My BOOKS
Ships in the Desert
In this linked essay collection, award-winning author Jeff Fearnside analyzes his four years as an educator on the Great Silk Road, primarily in Kazakhstan. Peeling back the layers of culture, environment, and history that define the country and its people, Fearnside creates a compelling narrative about this faraway land and soon realizes how the local, personal stories are, in fact, global stories. Fearnside sees firsthand the unnatural disaster of the Aral Sea—a man-made environmental crisis that has devastated the region and impacts the entire world. He examines the sometimes controversial ethics of Western missionaries, and reflects on personal and social change once he returns to the States.
*WINNER, Foreword Reviews INDIES Book of the Year Award, Adult Nonfiction—Essays*
*WINNER, Eric Hoffer Book Award, Nonfiction—Culture*
*SHORT LIST, Eric Hoffer Book Award Grand Prize*
*FINALIST, Eyelands International Book Award, Published Memoir*
A Husband and Wife Are One Satan
This new collection of linked short stories from award-winning author Jeff Fearnside explores the lives of ordinary people in Kazakhstan as they face the challenges of post-Soviet transition in the early 21st century. These stories illuminate the soul of a people tested by their circumstances: a man struggling between tradition and his conscience, a woman remembering her coming of age during perestroika, a woman who through memory comes to identify with “the other,” a husband and wife who seek reconciliation through the words they’ve used to hurt, and a grandfather who lost his loved ones and now must face his past.
*WINNER, Peace Corps Writers Award, Best Short Story Collection*
*WINNER, Orison Chapbook Prize*
Making Love While Levitating Three Feet in the Air
Making Love While Levitating Three Feet in the Air is a collection of 13 short stories linked thematically by the recurring idea of flight, in its various definitions and senses. The characters are sometimes in flight from their situations, sometimes from other people, sometimes from themselves. No one in these stories “wins” in the traditional sense; there are no tidy answers. But the stories are subtly life affirming in how each character deals with the difficulties of life. Each learns something about himself or herself, however fleeting that knowledge may be, however small a step forward it inspires. Life isn’t static, and neither are these people.
*WINNER, Eyelands International Book Awards, Published Short Stories*
*GRAND PRIZE WINNER, Santa Fe Writers Project's Literary Awards Program*
*FINALIST, New Rivers Press MVP Award*
*FINALIST, Permafrost Book Prize in Fiction*
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Lake
Lake, and Other Poems of Love in a Foreign Land is a collection of 10 poems set in the Central Asian country of Kazakhstan, exploring themes of love, loss, place, and displacement.
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Limited copies of remaining launch stock are available for $5 through Standing Rock Cultural Arts at their North Water Street Gallery, 300 N. Water St., Suite H, Kent, Ohio (walk-in only). Proceeds of this sale benefit SRCA’s arts programming and scholarships for those in need.
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*WINNER, Standing Rock Cultural Arts Open Poetry Chapbook Competition*