Elephant Sanctuary (Electric Literature's Recommended Reading)

0/5 ( ratings)

“Elephant Sanctuary,” about a dissolute rock star fleeing justice and fame, does that and then pushes everything one step further. It’s a kind of hardboiled chaos that starts in cynicism and moves with fleeting complexity through a story about a father and son toward an expansive humanity. Reading this short story is like driving off a cliff and ending up in a sunlit, downy field surrounded by singing angels. I don’t know how John pulls it off but he does, and I have the utmost respect for the creative audacity that thrust this story into being. - Minna Proctor, Editor, The Literary Review

About the Author: John McManus is the author of four books of fiction: Stop Breakin Down, Born on a Train, Bitter Milk, and his latest story collection, Fox Tooth Heart, forthcoming from Sarabande Books in November 2015. His work has appeared in Ploughshares, Tin House, McSweeney’s, American Short Fiction, The Oxford American, The Literary Review, and Harvard Review, among other journals and anthologies. He is the recipient of the Whiting Writers’ Award, the Fellowship of Southern Writers’ New Writing Award, Creative Capital Literature grant, and a Fulbright Scholar grant. He grew up in East Tennessee and lives in Virginia, where he teaches in the MFA creative writing program at Old Dominion University.

About the Guest Editor: The Literary Review is a quarterly of new writing from around the world that has been publishing out of Fairleigh Dickinson University since 1957. That makes it one of the oldest continually publishing literary magazines in the country. We pride ourselves on publishing stories, essays, and poems by new writers, making discoveries rather than chasing known quantities. The journal’s mission is simply to share writing we love with readers who love to read. The work we publish has the courage of its convictions—it is bold, unusual, risk-taking, and emotionally honest.

About the Publisher: Electric Literature is an independent publisher amplifying the power of storytelling through digital innovation. Electric Literature’s weekly fiction magazine, Recommended Reading, invites established authors, indie presses, and literary magazines to recommended great fiction. Once a month we feature our own recommendation of original, previously unpublished fiction.