The first collected triennial volume of winners and top-five finalists of the Luminaire Awards for Best Prose and Best Poetry for the years 2014 through 2016. Features 13 gut-punching short stories and 15 heart-rending poems by various authors, each piece having won out over hundreds of others to be selected as the best work of its respective year through a blind judging process, conducted by Alternating Current Press and external judges. Walk with storytellers through tales of domestic violence, children disappearing on spaceships, a car-parts thief at the scene of an accident, a gravedigger pulling the plug on a childhood nightmare, attending Santa Claus school, telling your secrets to strangers, and a dangerous proposal for fertility. Explore Tennessee, chase bombmakers out of hostage situations, come of age, stand at the Alamo, walk down Birch Street, pick apples, and return to your roots in these stories and poems by some of the independent press’ finest contemporary writers.
Authors
Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name. Please see: Michael Cooper Michael Cooper is an inland empire poet, PoetrIE member, CSUSB MFA Graduate, Veteran, and parent to two great sons: Markus & Jonathan. More of Cooper’s poems can be found in The Berkeley Review, The Portland Review, The LA Review, H_NGM_N among other fine publications. Cooper’s new book, coauthored with good friend Cindy Rinne, Speaking Through Sediment, is now available from ELJ Publications. Michael's work is experimental, seeking out new ways of exploring representational fields. The work is primarily concerned with returning people to care, and concern for others. Through use of storytelling and community building with the help of fellow writers, Michael hopes to be part of the wave toward understanding, agency, and breathing life into metaphor. Michael would like to make you aware that the splash zone includes the first 11 rows. source: Amazon
Constance Sayers is the author of the Amazon best-selling novel, A Witch in Time (2020 Redhook/Hachette) as well as The Ladies of the Secret Circus (2021 Redhook/Hachette) that received a starred review from both Publishers Weekly and Library Journal. Her books have been translated into six languages. A finalist for Alternating Current’s 2016 Luminaire Award for Best Prose, her short stories have appeared in Souvenir and Amazing Graces: Yet Another Collection of Fiction by Washington Area Women as well as The Sky is a Free Country. Her short fiction has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net. She received her master of arts in English from George Mason University and graduated magna cum laude with a bachelor of arts in writing from the University of Pittsburgh. She attended The Bread Loaf Writers Conference where she studied with Charles Baxter and Lauren Groff. A media executive, she’s twice been named one of the “Top 100 Media People in America” by Folio and included in their list of “Top Women in Media.” She lives in Washington DC. Like her character in The Ladies of the Secret Circus, she was the host of a radio show from midnight to six.
