Thomas Pierce
Thomas Pierce is the author of the novel, The Afterlives (Riverhead 2018), and the short story collection, Hall of Small Mammals. A recipient of the 5 Under 35 award from the National Book Foundation, his stories have appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Zoetrope, The Oxford American, and Virginia Quarterly Review and anthologized in
The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2014
and
The O. Henry Prize Stories 2015
. He has reported for NPR and National Geographic Magazine. Born and raised in South Carolina, he recieved his M.F.A. from the University of Virginia as Poe/Faulkner Fellow and currently lives near Charlottesville, VA with his wife and daughters.
“God created the world in seven days, but those days weren't necessarily twenty-four-hour days. Each one of His days might have been a million years long. Human time means nothing in the realm of Heaven, where clocks probably don't have hands, but golden arms, and the arms belong to God. On which day did the mammoth get created? It wasn't on the seventh day, since that was the day of rest. Quite possibly it came on the morning of the fifth an d went back out again the same afternoon. Thinking of creations come and gone in such a short amount of time makes Mawmaw sad.”
Thomas Pierce