“Rebecca Meacham has one of the freshest voices I’ve encountered… Blatantly wise, she creates stories that are deliciously subversive, brave and outrageous. As the lives of her characters get derailed, they move with the damaged grace of walking through broken glass on tiptoe.” —Jonis Agee, judge, Katherine Anne Porter Prize in Fiction, UNT Press
Awards for Let’s Do and Individual Short Stories
*Finalist, 2005 Paterson Fiction Prize
*Selection, Barnes & Noble “Discover Great New Writers” Program
*Anne Powers Book-Length Fiction Award, CWW
*Recognition of Outstanding Achievement, Wisconsin Library Association
*Winner, Indiana Review Short Fiction Prize, “Trim & Notions” (story)
*Winner, Chelsea Short Fiction Award, “Weights and Measures” (story)
Praise for Let’s Do: “Meacham’s stories have a novel’s heft; crafted with immediacy and candor, they reveal her uncanny precision in locating those points from which to propel her characters to a different and unexpected place — a place where there’s no second-guessing, and all bets are off.” — Barnes and Noble “Discover Great New Writers” Program
“Simply stated, this is contemporary fiction at its best. There is no filter here, nothing artificial…Rebecca Meacham is a talented new voice; Let’s Do should undoubtedly find its way onto every must-read list.” —Mid-American Review
“I love the way Rebecca Meacham looks at people—she brings both a surgeon’s precision and a sisterly tenderness to her examination of the hearts of her midwestern characters. The stories in Let’s Do are bright, witty and sharply observant, with a wonderfully rueful afterglow.” —Dan Chaon, author of Stay Awake
“The characters in Let’s Do are the kind of people we don’t want to be—drunks, stalkers, lonely ex-wives and husbands, grieving parents, all decent people who do indecent things—and Rebecca Meacham writes about them brilliantly, with empathy, intelligence and a scathing sense of humor. This is a terrific debut, by a fearless, hugely talented writer.” —Brock Clarke, author of Exley
“Meacham explores the familiar terrain of love and loss in her debut story collection, but her distinctive voice charges these nine stories with an intriguing combination of sardonic humor and emotional depth. In the sharply funny “Trim and Notions,” a newly pregnant teacher tries to find her balance after the baby’s father leaves her and she negotiates the process of introducing her new addition to her erratic, flighty sister and straitlaced mother. In the much soberer “Weights and Measures,” Meacham frames the harrowing story of a teenage girl’s descent into bulimia after her parent’s separation as a series of steps in a macabre, ironic how-to guide. Breakups and impending splits are frequent plot elements: in “The Assignment,” a photographer’s athletic girlfriend asks him to replicate the circumstances of her attack after a near-mugging, and the request brings his penchant for jealousy and stalking to the surface; in “Good Fences,” a struggling suburban couple moves to the country and the husband faces unlikely temptation in the form of a destitute but comely neighbor. The balance between dialogue and exposition remains impeccable throughout, and Meacham’s well-drawn, quirky characters help add definition to the spare narrative lines. Several of the stories dealing with loss fall into a similar pattern, but this is a strong debut from a writer who has just begun to scratch the surface of her talent.” —Publisher’s Weekly
Flash Fiction Chapbook: Morbid Curiosities—>
