collision

Collision

Collision

§

The hospital room was the size of a birdcage. Only a flimsy curtain separated me from the Russian man. His dumpy wife was visiting again, her sagging face done up in bold paint, and atop her head, a pink pillbox hat. Sure enough, the room was filling with ugly clouds of Russian.

Nina Schuyler

Nina Schuyler’s novel, The Painting, published by Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, was named a Best Book by San Francisco Chronicle and nominated for the Northern California Book Award. It’s been translated into Chinese, Portuguese, and Serbian. Her short story, “Water Babies” won the Santa Clara Review’s Editor’s Choice Prize for Fiction, her short short, “Black Holes” won the Big Ugly Review Short Short Contest for 2008; and she was a finalist in the 2009 Stanford Fiction Contest.