Second Shift - Paperback

by Susan Tekulve (Author)

In this collection of twelve essays, Susan Tekulve explores the tasks we perform that earn us more than a paycheck. Tekulve's topics include the gathering of secret family stories; surviving a night of haggis and Scottish whisky; mothering a musician son; facing down two teenage gunmen, and caring for a dying mother. The key word in this collection is memory. Whether investigating common occurrences, or making narrative sense out of events for which there are very few words, these essays remind us that memories, and the shaping of them into stories, are the best kind of work.

Author Biography

Susan Tekulve is the author of In the Garden of Stone, winner of the 2012 South Carolina First Novel Prize and a 2014 Gold IPPY Award. She's also published two short story collections: Savage Pilgrims and My Mother's War Stories. Her stories and essays have appeared in Shenandoah, The Georgia Review, New Letters, Best New Writing 2007, The Indiana Review, Denver Quarterly, Puerto del Sol, Prairie Schooner, North Dakota Quarterly, Connecticut Review, Beloit Fiction Journal, Crab Orchard Review, The Literary Review, Webdelsol, Black Warrior Review, and The Kansas City Star. She has been awarded a Sewanee Writers' Conference Scholarship and a Bread Loaf Writers' Conference Scholarship. An Associate Professor of English, she teaches in the BFA and MFA in creative writing programs at Converse College.