Jennifer Pashley
Jennifer Pashley is the author of two collections of stories: States (Lewis-Clark Press 2007) was called "an inviting and well carved debut" by Aimee Bender. About The Conjurer(Standing Stone Books 2013), Tina May Hall says, "Pashley is a hard luck oracle, tracing portents in a world heavy with the weight of not-quite babies, truck-stop infidelities, the ghosts of June Carter and Raymond Carver and Flannery O'Connor."
Her stories have appeared widely in journals like PANK, SmokeLong Quarterly, and Salt Hill. She has been awarded The Mississippi Review Prize for Fiction (2009), the Red Hen Prize for Fiction (2005) and the Carve Magazine Esoteric Award for LGBT Fiction (2012).
Prior to writing full time, Jennifer worked in advertising, as a snake handler, a teacher, and at a fish fry. She lives with her family in Clinton, NY.
The Conjurer
The stories in The Conjurer are unflinching in their portrayal of humans in love and the side effects of passion--strange consummations, half-hearted substitutions, moments of grace. Pashley is a hard luck oracle, tracing portents in a world heavy with the weight of not-quite babies, truck-stop infidelities, the ghosts of June Carter and Raymond Carver and Flannery O'Connor. These beautiful stories walk the edge between bravado and poetry, creating their own weird magic. One of the characters imagines being poisoned from the inside out by gold flaked from the rim of an old coffee cup; this collection accomplishes a similar feat, a gorgeous poisoning, Pashley's language a precious lethal substance spreading into all the hidden places.