submitted by cihlar@augsburg.edu
In THE MASTERS REVIEW Cole Meyer praises I HAVE HER MEMORIES NOW (Howling Bird Press, 2022), “The characters who populate Grinstead’s pages are as sure of themselves as they are flawed. Take, for instance, the narrator-protagonist of the titular story, ‘I Have Her Memories Now’ who announces in the opening lines: ‘I went to grade school with Marlie O’Hagan, the world’s first recipient of a double-organ transplant. I despised her.’ Or, the narrator-protagonist of ‘Last Body,’ which begins, ‘They’d put Mary Helen in a gray pantsuit, a wool-blend number with a single-breasted blazer at least a size too small. I couldn’t imagine a worse choice.’ Grinstead leverages their defiant, opinionated nature, and forces them to confront the fact that the world is not as black-and-white as they would like to believe. . . . Grinstead shows again and again that she has a gift for the surprising but inevitable conclusion, and it’s no wonder Howling Bird Press selected this collection for this year’s book prize. The path of each of these stories is so particular, I can’t imagine any writer other than Grinstead having penned them.” Howling Bird Press is staffed by students enrolled in Augsburg’s MFA program and by undergraduate interns from Augsburg. Cheers to our editors and our author!