Visiting Hours

The Cover!

Another masterpiece from Steven Seighman

 

The epigraph

I'm reading Jami Attenberg's new novel, The Kept Man, and in the prologue have found what will be the epigraph for Visiting Hours!

"Waiting for visiting hours to start is different from waiting for visiting hours to end."

Sure, she neatly encapsulates much of my anthology in one simple sentence, but I just can't pass it up.

Who Will You Get to Read?

What authors will be included in the Visiting Hours anthology?  Some are listed in the VH Authors list of to the side - those are authors with websites and those are links.

But here is the full Table of Contents.  In the coming days I'll post author biographies of those involved:

Waiting – Introduction                                           Kyle Minor
Where to Begin                                                    Benjamin Percy
Open My Heart                                                     T.M. McNally
Not a Leaf Stirring                                                Quinn Dalton
Picnic                                                                  Max Ruback
Wash, Rinse, Spin                                                 Beth Ann Bauman
The Garden Plot                                                   Philip F. Deaver
Vanishing Act                                                       Steven Gillis
Regrets                                                               James R. Cooley
The Rain Barrel                                                    Jim Nichols
Gaarg.  Gaarrgh.  Gak                                           Pamela Erens
A Face in Shadow                                                 Joseph Freda
Survival Traits                                                      Nancy Ginzer
My Father’s Heart                                                 David Abrams
The Kiss-Me-Quick                                                Rochelle Distelheim
The Well-Head                                                     Gabriel Welsch
One Moment:  1330 South McLeod                          Kaytie M. Lee
The Dead Woman from the Newspaper                   Patry Francis
If I Die Before I Wake (excerpt)                             Lauren Baratz-Logsted
Not Waving But Drowning                                      Ron Rash
Taughannock Falls                                                 Bill Roorbach
Wanderlust                                                          Michael Milliken
Visiting Hours                                                       Roberta Israeloff

What Others Have Said About Visiting Hours

"VISITING HOURS unhinges our anxieties about illness.  These stories are funny, touching, and buoyed high by the surprising twists of human love.  Thank goodness for a book that paints bright, savvy colors on white hospital walls."

Alyson Hagy - author of Snow, Ashes (Graywolf, 2007), as well as another novel and three story collections

"Why aren't there more books like this one?  This anthology is alive, and it's electric.  Every piece in here is full of heart and packed with surprise.  Dan Wickett has done a great job of finding work by writers who matter.  Here's to him--and to them."

Steve Yarbrough - author of The End of California (Knopf, 2006) as well as three other novels and three short story collections. 

Visiting Hours

What is Visiting Hours?  It is an anthology that will be published by Press 53 in the Fall of 2008.  It contains 21 short stories and a novel excerpt, not to mention a fantastic introduction.

The idea behind Visiting Hours comes from a great author friend of mine, Amy Koppelman.  This was completely her idea - an anthology of short fiction surrounding the concept of visiting hours.  That scenario where one person, or being, is forced to be at a location, where anybody else there is just visiting.  A place that the person, or being, stuck at the location is there all hours of the day, where those who are visiting are limited to specific hours of the day that they may enter.

Her belief, which became my belief as well after a few impassioned emails and a phone call from Amy, was that these scenarios create great fodder for authors and their various takes on the human condition.  The scenarios are varied - there's one set at a veteranarian's office, one set in prison, one in an emergency room, one in a V.A. hospital and a couple are set in nursing homes.  In some cases people die, but not in every story.  People visit both family, and friends, and in some cases, neither.  Adults visit children, and children visit adults.  Spouses visit, and at times mourn, for each other.  In each case, the individuals involved realize that the time they have to spend is precious and that they have to choose how to use it on their own.