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Alan Davis
Bio:
Alan Davis grew up in southern Louisiana near the mouth of the Mississippi and now lives in Minnesota near the river's headwaters. So Bravely Vegetative (2011) won The Prize Americana for Fiction; Alone with the Owl (2000) and Rumors from the Lost World (1993) won the Many Voices Project Competition. His most recent book, Clouds Are the Mountains of the World (2024), is a dystopian novel-in-stories. He's co-editor of Visiting Bob: Poems Inspired by the Life and Work of Bob Dylan, the forthcoming Visiting Joni: Poems Inspired by the Life and Work of Joni Mitchell, and of 10 editions of American Fiction: The Best Unpublished Stories by Emerging Writers, chosen by Writer's Digest during his tenure as one of the top 15 places to publish fiction in the United States. He has received a Loft-McKnight Award of Distinction in Creative Prose, a Minnesota State Arts Board Fellowship, a Fulbright to Slovenia, and a Fulbright-Hays Grant to Indonesia. He served as Editor of New Rivers Press, an independent press founded in 1968, from 2003–2016 after helping to relocate it to Minnesota State University; it published, until its closure in 2022, more than 400 titles in all genres and served as a teaching press to prepare students for careers in publishing. Professor Emeritus at Minnesota State University, he's taught at the University of North Carolina and Loyola University in Chicago as well as low-residency MFA programs in Maine (Stonecoast) and Connecticut (Fairfield University).
Clouds Are the Mountains of the World, a novel-in-stories set in a surreal, dysphoric near-future, is a dark masterwork worthy of Cormac McCarthy's The Road. "A compelling vision rendered in language, both surreal and chillingly familiar, that summons the apocalyptic dreams of Bruegel and Bosch." (Lin Enger). Ava, a luminous, troubled protagonist, along with her abandoned daughter Serena, and Heimlich (of Heimlich Maneuver fame), come and go like the effervescent hero of Where's Waldo? This novel-in-stories will haunt you as women (and Heimlich) hold their own against appalling misogyny and surreal anarchy. "People, our grandchildren, the young who belong to others, they will say, 'What was it like, those years? How did you live through them?' Give them this book, Clouds Are the Mountains of the World, and say 'This. This was what it was like. They came for us and we prevailed." "This novel is becoming less fictional by the minute." (James Edmunds)
Praise:
"I kept thinking that I wouldn't mind ending up as a character in one of his stories. Odds are, he'd do me justice." - Dorothy Allison, NYT Book Review.
"It's hard to convey my enthusiasm for this book - all the ordinary adjectives of praise seem trite and inadequate." - Tim O'Brien.
"There is magic in a world that still somehow seems devoid of magic." - Publishers Weekly.
"He has an original talent, a feel for action, a sparse yet vivid style, a sharp satirical sense, a keen eye and ear for the follies of the age." - Walker Percy.
"Moving easily between blue-collar types and Social Register summer people, New Age dancers and Old World immigrants, underground poets and Elvis freaks, Davis demonstrates an impressive range in this collection." - Kirkus Reviews.
Visiting Bob: Poems Inspired by the Life and Work of Bob Dylan:
"The poets included in this collection want no explanations from Dylan; they are busy, if anything, using him to explain themselves. These are the people who could hold entire conversations using only Dylan quotes and a few conjunctions. Some of them are people who first realized that the words count when they first listened to Dylan. That the way it's said is as important as what is said. They get it, and reading them makes me feel that I am in very congenial company." - Chris Smither, from the Foreword.
"If Bob Dylan has so many sides as to be a house of mirrors, then here are a hundred poets caught in the glass. Some worshipful, others still obsessed, or nostalgic, imitative, even rapacious, but all gathered together around a singer who shuffled words and music together to form a whole new deck. Imagine, one poet within a circle of a hundred poets!" - Billy Collins.
"In a pop culture of rapid, vertiginous change, when audiences are more fickle and ephemeral than any in history, Bob Dylan yet retains his stature and something of his original mystery." - Joyce Carol Oates
American Fiction: The Best Unpublished Short Stories by Emerging Writers:
Chosen twice by Writer's Digest as one of the top 15 places to publish fiction in the U.S.
"The one anthology that deliberately and exclusively sets out to find the best unpublished stories by 'emerging' writers." - Tobias Wolff, judge.
"Truly, a breath of fresh air for us all, writers and readers alike." - Raymond Carver, judge.
"A must-read collection for all short-fiction enthusiasts." - Booklist
For more about New Rivers Press, see The Ballad of New Rivers Press, Part One.
You can read a story/chapter from Clouds Are the Mountains of the World here.
The first chapter of a novel-in-progress, The Theater of the Invisible Guests, can be found here.
Dorothy Allison's New York Times book review of Rumors From the Lost World is here.
You can follow him here on Facebook. He's available for interviews, readings and workshops. Contact him for more information.
CLICK HERE TO ORDER CLOUDS ARE THE MOUNTAINS OF THE WORLD!