Chosen as the best manuscript out of 253 submitted to our 2nd annual contest, Nina Shope's three novellas demonstate stunning range and intensity.

"Nina Shope weaves a suspension of alluring delicacy, strength, and beauty."
- Carole Maso

In Hangings, a young woman learns that her mother is dying and finds herself stalked by nightmarish figures -- the hideously transformed maiden, Arachne, an upside-down man in a Miro painting, and spiders that hatch and haunt the text like tumors.

In Urbem imagines an archetypal ancient city, that city beneath the pavement of all modern cities, in fantastic prose reminiscent of Italo Calvino's Invisible Cities.

Finally, Hagiographies explores two intense female friendships, both of which are suddenly shattered, in a wildly inventive narrative proceeding by means of juxtaposed images rather than sequential events.

"Whether it is busy metastasizing cancer into mythology or invoking into existence a desire-fraught and maddened harpy of a city, Nina Shope's writing is smart and carefully layered - yet at the most unexpected moments it is the emotional equivalent of an open wound. An impressive debut."

- Brian Evenson, author of The Wavering Knife, Altmann's Tongue, and others

"The dazzling debut of an immensely talented and big-hearted writer. These hypnotically beautiful novellas are wildly intelligent, deeply felt, and full of reminders that 'experimental' writing just means: writing that is trying with all its heart to account for the many wonders of the world."

- George Saunders, author of Pastoralia and CivilWarLand in Bad Decline

"The publication of Hangings inaugurates a writer of literary stature and significance, power and grace. With a seminal style that defies definition, Nina Shope has delivered a masterwork, both profoundly beautiful and profoundly disturbing. It is a visionary book that yet never forgets what makes literature matter. From a mythical city infested with prophets to quests shaped by stars on the floor, all roads lead to the depths of her characters' souls. In a world where sophisticated work is often bloodless, Hangings is a work with heart, Hangings is a work that matters."

- Arthur Flowers, author of Mojo Rising: Confessions of a 21st Century Conjureman

"Hagiographies ... explores the intensities of youth, the wildness and weirdness of sex, the incredible complexity of words not spoken, 'letters' never sent, lives lived only in fragment, expectation, loneliness, misdirection, and loss. This is a writer of depth and scope."

- Kenneth Bernard, judge of the 2004-05 Prize and author of The Man in the Stretcher.