Reading, book signing for Michael Kardos Thursday
An English faculty member at Mississippi State who co-directs the university's creative writing program will introduce his first book March 24 with a campus reading and book signing.
"One Last Good Time" by Michael Kardos has earned praise from reviewers and other contemporary authors since its Feb. 1 publication by Press 53 of Winston-Salem, N.C. The reading begins at 7:30 p.m. in McCool Hall Room 100, Rogers Auditorium.
Kardos' writings have been named Notable Stories in the 2009 and 2010 editions of Best American Short Stories. The Southern Review, Crazyhorse, Prairie Schooner, Pleiades, Blackbird, as well as numerous other magazines and anthologies, also have published his work.
Last month, his fictional piece on Groundhog Day was featured in nytimes.com, the New York Times' online version.
At MSU, Kardos also serves as editor for the Jabberwock Review, a journal of literature and art published by the English department. A University of Missouri doctoral graduate, he was reared along the New Jersey shore.
In announcing its release of "One Last Good Time," Press 53 noted that stories in the collection "illuminate not just life at the (New Jersey) shore, but life anywhere it exists on the edge: between the solid and the fluid, where one runs out of land and crashes into the waves of the strange and unknown."
Among the collection is "Mr. Barotta's Ashes Have the Personality of a Grouchy Old Man." In addition to being central to the interconnected stories, this entry has been individually selected for a grand prize in fiction by PRISM international, a British Columbia-based quarterly magazine dedicated to showcasing "the best in contemporary writing and translation from around the world." [Ed. note: PRISM international is the correct spelling. For more, visit http://prismmagazine.ca/.]
Kardos' 191-page book contains nine other entries, including the title story, "One Last Good Time."
Prior to completing a doctorate at Missouri, Kardos received a music degree from Princeton University and a master's of fine arts in fiction from Ohio State University. (For more, visit www.michaelkardos.com.)
