Melanie Sumner, a 2010 recipient of the National Endowment for the Arts Literary Fellowship, most recently wrote the novel How To Write A Novel (2015). Her previous books include The Ghost of Milagro Creek (2010), The School of Beauty and Charm (2001), a novel, and Polite Society (1995), a collection of short stories. She was a regional winner for Granta's Best Young American Novelists competition. Her publishing history includes short fiction and creative nonfiction in many anthologies and textbooks including Best of the South, and numerous magazines and journals including The New Yorker, Harper's, The New York Times, and Atlanta Magazine. She has appeared on NPR and Georgia Public Radio. Sumner earned her MFA from Boston University and her BA from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She has been a resident at Yaddo and the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown and was the final author chosen for the Seymour Lawrence imprint. Currently she lives in Rome, Georgia with her two children, Zoë and Rider, ages 11 and 7, and teaches Creative Writing at Kennesaw State University.
-
Polite SocietyStoriesFrom"Spiritus"
The next day I piled my possessions among the goats and chickens and boxes tied with string on the roof of a taxi brousse, squeezed in with the Senegalese passengers, and went to Dakar. I got the key to my new house, took a pregnancy test, and arranged a round-trip flight to Washington, D.C. Every Peace Corps volunteer was allowed one abortion.
Polite Society:Stories -
Polite SocietyStoriesFrom"The Guide"
At the gate of the Grand Hotel du Mali, a brothel that served as an inn for the rare tourist in Oulaba, Darren paid her first guide. The child had only carried her pack up the short path from the road, and his dark eyes grew round as he took the one hundred C.F.A. coin into his fist. Immediately, the other boys attacked him, pawing for the money. “White lady!” one of the children shouting in French. “We all led you here. We are all your guides, and you must pay all of us!”
Polite Society:Stories -
Polite SocietyStoriesFrom"Naar"
Along the road the flames from black and gutted cars licked up toward the sun, turned white, and shimmered. Balls of smoke hung in the sky. Darren drove past hordes of women running down the street, holding their pagnes around their waists with one hand, babies jouncing on their backs. Children streamed around them, laughing and crying. A Senegalese tank rolled by, scattering some sheep who ran first one way and then the other, their heads jerking up, eyes rolling back with terror.
Polite Society:Stories
“Ghost of Milagro Creek shimmers with the light and landscape of New Mexico, and sparkles with the uniquely bleak, dark humor that has allowed generations of Native Americans to survive the worst kind of well-intentioned ethnocide by the U.S. government. The multifaceted narrative moves forward and backward in time until a picture emerges . . . of a small community whose broken world might finally have a chance at healing, if they can reclaim their once powerful medicine, hidden in plain sight.” —The Atlanta Journal Constitution
“Though the moment on which The Ghost of Milagro Creek turns happens fairly early on, we'd rather not spoil it, mostly because Sumner so immediately brings her characters to life that when it happens, it's devastating . . . [Ghost of Milagro Creek] simmers with metaphysical tension.” —Time Out Chicago
“Melanie Sumner creates a brand-new kind of ugly American: Darren, a spoiled, drunken, horny brat from Tennessee who joins the Peace Corps because she can't think of anything better to do . . . Sumner's brilliant storytelling makes you wish you could reach out and slap Darren on every page. Sumner writes so incisively that you'll be sure Polite Society is autobiographical . . . A [rating.]” —Entertainment Weekly
Selected Works
