Showing results by narrator "Mary Gauthier" in All Categories

Mary Gauthier was 12 years old when she was given her Aunt Jenny’s old guitar and taught herself to play with a Mel Bay basic guitar workbook. Music offered her a window to a world where others felt the way she did. Songs became lifelines to her, and she longed to write her own, one day. Then, for a decade, while struggling with addiction, Gauthier put her dream away and her call to songwriting faded. It wasn’t until she got sober and went to an open mic with a friend did she realize that she not only still wanted to write songs, she needed to.

The characters in Mary Miller's debut short story collection, Big World, are at once autonomous and lonesome, possessing both a longing to connect with those around them and a cynicism. Her writing is unapologetically honest and efficient, and the gut-wrenching directness of her prose is reminiscent of Mary Gaitskill and Courtney Eldridge - if Gaitskill's and Eldridge's stories were set in the South and reeked of spilled beer and cigarette smoke.