Aliens & Other Stories
by Kathleen Wheaton
October 15,
2013
Paperback, $16.95
ISBN: 978-0931846717
Fiction
222 pages
Washington Writers’ Publishing House
October 15, 2013
This
loosely-linked collection of stories is above all about people in exile –from
their native countries, their families, their objects of desire. Political
refugees from Argentina’s “dirty war,” survivors of a Cuban shipwreck and of
Franco’s Spain, all navigate life far from home, whether in Madrid, Buenos
Aires or suburban Washington, D.C. Minor
characters in one story become protagonists of another, as different
generations confront a legacy of loss and longing.
Grab your copy today!
FOR
IMMEDIATE RELEASE
CONTACT:
Marissa Curnutte
347.574.3136
JOURNALIST DRAWS ON TIME IN SPAIN,
LATIN AMERICA FOR AWARD-WINNING SHORT STORY COLLECTION
Kathleen Wheaton’s
‘Aliens and Other Stories’ releases this fall from Washington Writers
BETHESDA, Md. – Inspired by stories she picked up during her years
as a journalist in Spain and Latin America, Kathleen
Wheaton gives
readers a rare glimpse into the lives of exiles, refugees and wanderers in her award-winning collection,
“Aliens and Other Stories” (Oct. 15. Washington
Writers’ Publishing House).
Wheaton’s debut collection strings together stories about a striking
group of characters whose tales are heartbreaking, dramatic, enchanting and
most of all, unforgettable.
“What a pleasure it is to read Kathleen
Wheaton’s collection of short stories, all of which expose with knife-like
clarity the all-too-human flesh of contemporary life,” says Anne Bernays, author of “New
York in the Fifties” and “The Man on the Third Floor.” “Wheaton connects her
characters to the world beyond the front door and the community while at the
same time, and often with a sweet touch of humor, invites us into the heart of
the family. Wheaton reveals the worst and the best of people unsure but still
trying.”
“Aliens and Other Stories” won the
Washington Writers’ Publishing House 2013 prize for fiction. Wheaton’s book
will be available Oct. 15 on Amazon.com.
Wheaton lived in Spain and Latin America for 12 years where she
worked as a journalist and travel writer. She is the author and editor of two
travel books that cover Spain and Buenos Aires. She has been honored with awards from the Society of
Professional Journalists. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, The
Philadelphia Inquirer, The San Francisco Examiner, The Paris Review, Town & Country, Bethesda Magazine and
Smithsonian, among others. She now lives in the Washington D.C. area with her
husband, NPR reporter David Welna.
Early
Praise for Kathleen Wheaton’s
“Aliens & Other Stories”
“Kathleen
Wheaton’s characters are exiles: from their nations, their native families,
their objects of desire. These ‘ruined specimens,’ as one character calls them,
are almost always rescued – if not by circumstance, then by Wheaton’s
compassionate, penetrating prose. These cleverly interlinked stories are a
homeland of their own.”
– Michael Lowenthal, author of “Charity
Girl” and “The Paternity Test”
“In
‘Aliens and Other Stories,’ Kathleen Wheaton captures the disparate narratives
of immigrants adrift in middle-class America – from the displaced and
underemployed to the haunted legacy of Argentina’s desaparecidos. She imbues
these stories with warmth and nuance and – perhaps most remarkably of all –
with humor.”
– Susan Coll, author of “Acceptance” and
“Beach Week”
“With
a keen eye and a rich and precise prose, Kathleen Wheaton embarks on a journey
into the hearts and minds of exiles and expatriates. From the alienated and somber
atmosphere of Argentina’s ‘dirty war’ to Madrid and Washington D.C., her
characters are castaways, trying to find meaning in a reality that seems
suspended in a moral vacuum. ‘Aliens and Other Stories’ is a remarkable first
book.”
– Mario Diament, former editor of La
Opinion, author of “Lost Tango” and “Martin Eidan”
“What
a pleasure it is to read Kathleen Wheaton’s collection of short stories, all of
which expose with knife-like clarity the all-too-human flesh of contemporary
life. Wheaton connects her characters to the world beyond the front door and
the community while at the same time, and often with a sweet touch of humor,
invites us into the heart of the family. Wheaton reveals the worst and the best
of people unsure but still trying.”
– Anne Bernays, author of “New York in
the Fifties” and “The Man on the Third Floor”
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Veteran journalist Kathleen Wheaton’s byline has appeared in publications all over
the world, and this fall, her name will grace the cover of her newest work,
“Aliens and Other Stories.”
Wheaton was born in 1957 on a U.S. Army base in Germany and grew up in
Pasadena and Palo Alto, Calif. After graduating from Stanford University in ’79 with a Bachelor of
Arts degree in creative writing and Spanish, she packed her bags and headed to
Madrid, Spain, where she taught English for two years. Wheaton earned a Master
of Fine Arts degree from Boston University in ‘82. She lived in New York until ‘86 and returned to
Spain for a year to write and edit a travel book for Insight Guides. She then traveled to Argentina for a second guidebook,
where she met NPR reporter David Welna.
They married in 1988 and lived in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil and Tepoztlan, Mexico before returning to the
United States in ’97 along with their two sons, Ben and
Alex, both born in Latin America.
Wheaton
has been honored with three Dateline awards from the Society of Professional Journalists
for profiles of public radio host Diane Rehm and opera singer Denyce
Graves as well as a story
about teen suicide published in Bethesda
Magazine. She has received three grants from the Maryland Arts Council
and in 2005, and she claimed the top spot at The Baltimore Review’s fiction
contest. Her interviews and articles have appeared in The
New York Times, The
Philadelphia Inquirer, The San Francisco Examiner, The
Paris Review, Town &
Country, European Travel & Life, Via, Applause and Smithsonian Magazine.
Wheaton’s short stories have been published in The Boston Globe Sunday Magazine, Byline, Flyway, The Baltimore
Review, Timber Creek Review, New South, Smokelong Quarterly, Green Hills Literary Lantern, Artisan, River Oak Review and Narrative as well as anthologies Flash Fiction Forward and Amazing Graces.
Wheaton’s collection of short stories, “Aliens and
Other Stories,” will be released Oct. 15, 2013, by the Washington
Writers’ Publishing House. The
book recently won the publishing company’s 2013 award for fiction.
Wheaton
is an assistant editor at Narrative, an online literary
magazine. She works as a Spanish and Portuguese interpreter for Montgomery
County public schools in Maryland. She lives in the Washington D.C. area with her
husband.
Connect with Kathleen:
Q&A with “Aliens & Other Stories"
Author Kathleen Wheaton
What inspired you to work on this book?
When
I went to Buenos Aires to write a guidebook to the city, Argentina was
recovering from the trauma of a brutal military dictatorship in which 30,000
people disappeared. It was a strange time to be writing a travel book. Often
I’d be in a cafe discussing maps or photos with a contributor and the person
would casually mention having been arrested during the “dirty war”, or having
gone into hiding, or that someone close to them had disappeared. These abrupt
revelations haunted me, and later I wrote a couple of short stories based on them.
When I moved to the D.C. suburbs, after years of living abroad, I identified
more with people who had come from other places and were struggling to adjust
than with fellow Americans who’d always lived here. These experiences have informed the stories
in “Aliens.”
Have you visited Buenos Aires since you were there to write the
guidebook? If so, what had changed? What was the same?
My husband and I returned together in 2007 and then with
our teenage sons in 2009. There were some shiny new shops and condos built
along what had been a smelly and derelict wharf, but in 20 years the city had
changed less than I’d expected—some of my favorite cafes had the same waiters,
20 years older. But the dirty war was farther in the past, so it wasn’t the
subtext of every conversation. The internet has connected Argentina more to the
rest of the world, and yet there remains this sense of remoteness. Most
Argentines have roots somewhere far away, and so Buenos Aires has an air of
melancholy and nostalgia that is very enticing to a writer, since we traffic
heavily in those two emotions.
Do you consider yourself more of a journalist or a fiction
writer?
I
began as a fiction writer and fell into journalism when I went to South America
and fell in love with a journalist. It seemed like such an interesting life,
though I felt I wasn’t aggressive enough to be a real reporter. But I was
encouraged by something Joan Didion said to the effect that a harmless
appearance can be an advantage. If you are just quiet and willing to listen,
you hear the most extraordinary things. In DC, where people are practical and
career-oriented, I’ve noticed that a lot of fiction writers use their day jobs
as cover. Then they’re outed when they publish a novel or story collection. But
I continue to enjoy doing journalism—connecting with real people, not having to
struggle to make an unbelievable story sound plausible.
How do you juggle your two writing careers?
When we moved to Bethesda I had the
good luck to begin writing for a bimonthly magazine that was just starting up,
and which has continued to give me assignments. This meant that if I was
diligent I could spend a month reporting and writing a nonfiction piece and
then have a month free to write a short story.
This has made both kinds of writing feel like a “vacation” from the
other—at least for the first few minutes, until I actually sit down and start
working. Because then you come up
against the reality that all writing is really, really hard.
Have you used stories you’ve reported as a journalist in your
fiction?
Journalism
would seem to be a rich source of plots and characters, but the truth is that
once I finish a nonfiction story to my and my editor’s satisfaction, I’m done
with it. I might claim some high-minded refusal to use the people I’ve
interviewed as fictional fodder, except that I do steal things from them—their
home furnishings, their mannerisms, something they mentioned in passing about
their grandparents. Fiction writers are magpies.
You lived in Spain and Latin America for 12 years before moving
back to the United States in ‘97. Why do you think these
stories stuck with you for so long?
Maybe even more than childhood, a person’s twenties are a
really formative period. So many great (and not-so-great) works of art seem to
center around the themes and preoccupations of that time of life. And it takes
a while to figure out what it all means. At least it has taken me a while.
Because the minute I say this I think of writers from Fitzgerald to the Spanish
novelist Carmen Laforet, who wrote so beautifully and profoundly about youth
while they were young, as it was happening.
What do you hope readers take away from “Aliens and Other
Stories?”
For me
the experience of going to live in another country and learning another
language was a revelation—my sense of the strangeness of life was suddenly,
objectively, true. Being an actual foreigner struggling to understand was both
freeing and reassuring. So I hope that readers who literally have been aliens
as well as those who simply have felt that way will find they have something in
common with my characters.
What countries would you like to visit next?
About a year and a half ago I wrote a magazine piece
about an Iranian family and decided to study Persian, which sounded to my
uncomprehending ear beautiful and poetic. I don’t have much hope of visiting
Iran or even of mastering the language enough to read the Persian poets in the
original, and yet I keep at it. It’s
opened up another world.
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