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Melissa Pritchard

Starred Review, Featured Fiction, Publishers Weekly

Starred Review, Kirkus Review

Foreword Reviews

Historical Novels Review

LibraryThing Review

Midwestern Review

FLIGHT OF THE WILD SWAN, Bellevue Literary Press,

pub date March 12, 2024

Awards: Flannery O'Connor, Carl Sandburg, Janet Kafka, NEA, five Pushcart and O.Henry Prizes, Barnes & Noble Great Writers Award, Carson McCullers Fellow. Fiction, non-fiction in Paris Review, Ecotone, A Public Space, Conjunctions, LitMag, Southern Review, O the Oprah Magazine, Wilson Quarterly, the Nation, Chicago Tribune, NYTBR, others. Frequently anthologized. Fiction editor: IMAGE


“He understood the mind's pride, filleting, pinning down life. Understood taking apart, reassembling and labeling. To Understand was to control, to keep the terror of human insignificance at bay. It was routine to self-importance, this ability to kill and to rebuild, to catalog and stop any motion too directly pointing out human limitation and death.”
Melissa Pritchard
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“In death, as in sleep, I am all things.”
Melissa Pritchard
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“...I am discovering that it is truly a mistake--it may even be a moral wrong, in fact--to judge. Truth is too complex, too contradictory, too mercurial, to be one-sided, though it is human nature to prefer the reassurance and ease of firm judgement. Judgement helps us to justify our less savory actions.”
Melissa Pritchard
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