Daily News

Award-winning Author to Read from Short-story Collection at Springfield College

SPRINGFIELD — Award-winning fiction writer and Springfield College Associate Professor of English Justine Dymond will read from her short-story collection, The Emigrant and Other Stories, on Thursday, Sept. 23 at 7:30 p.m. in the Forum, located inside the Harold C. Smith Learning Commons. The event will include a Q&A session with the author. This event is free and open to the Springfield College community and the public.

Described as “smart and subversive” and “a masterful collection from a gifted stylist,” The Emigrant & Other Stories ranges widely in setting and era, including France during World War II, Maine in the early 18th century, and Tennessee in the 21st century.

The Emigrant and Other Stories won the 2018 Eludia Award from Hidden Rivers Arts. In advanced praise for the collection, novelist Allison Amend noted that “her stories’ astonishing breadth in style, time, and place allow Dymond to examine from all angles the powerful drive that propels us away from the familiar.”

Dymond’s other awards and honors include a 2020 Mass Cultural Council finalist grant, second place in the New South prose-writing contest for her memoir about breast cancer titled Brave of Worms, a 2007 O. Henry Prize, a “distinguished” story in The Best American Short Stories 2006, two Pushcart Prize nominations, and a nomination for The Best American Travel Writing. Her stories have appeared in Pleiades, Massachusetts Review, Briar Cliff Review, Meat for Tea, Lowestoft Chronicle, and Cargo Literary.

Her co-edited collection Motherhood Memoirs: Mothers Creating/Writing Lives was published in 2013. She has been honored with grants and residencies from the Vermont Studio Center, Writers OMI at Ledig House, and Martha’s Vineyard Institute of Creative Writing. On faculty in the Department of Literature, Writing, and Journalism at Springfield College since 2008, she is currently working on a novel based on the life of a woman who was tried for infanticide in Boston in 1733.