Proper Imposters - by Chaya Bhuvaneswar & Mauricio Montiel Figueiras & Jason Ockert & Jeff Parker (Paperback)

About the Book

Four contemporary authors explore the vices and virtues of deception and how it manifests in ways personal, psychological, propulsive, and profound.

Book Synopsis

Distributed by University Press of Florida on behalf of
Panhandler Books, an imprint of the Department of English and World
Languages at the University of West Florida



In Proper Imposters,
four contemporary authors explore the vices and virtues of deception
and how it manifests in ways personal, psychological, propulsive, and
profound. An accountant at a pencil manufacturing company investigates a
series of ominous events behind the facade of the mysterious company
where he works; from their deathbeds, fictionalized versions of Nikolai
Gogol and Edgar Allen Poe look back on their lives and remember an epic,
transformational, and ahistorical road trip they took together as young
men; a young woman is startled into action trying to execute "a simple
plan" of escape involving cash, a sleep-over by her college roommate and
the bold seduction of a boy she has decided to lose her virginity to;
and, a reclusive night-shift worker tries a daring weight-loss
experiment only to find himself pursued by a stalker no one else can
see. Montiel Figueiras, Parker, Bhuvaneswar, and Ockert are devotees and
virtuosos of the form, and each novella is lyrically rich in its prose
and swift in its plotting. Together, the novellas startle with the
consequences of seeing and being seen.

About the Author

Chaya Bhuvaneswar is a practicing physician, writer, and PEN /American Robert W. Bingham Debut Fiction award finalist for her story collection White Dancing Elephants: Stories,
which was also selected as a Kirkus Reviews Best Debut Fiction and Best
Short Story Collection and appeared on "best of" lists for Harper's Bazaar, Elle, Vogue India, and Entertainment Weekly. Her work has appeared in
The New York Times, Salon, The Sun, Narrative Magazine, Tin House,
Electric Literature, Kenyon Review, Masters Review, The Millions,
Joyland, Michigan Quarterly Review, The Awl, and elsewhere. She has received fellowships from MacDowell, Community of Writers, and Sewanee Writers Workshop. Mauricio Montiel Figueiras is a writer of prose fiction
and essays, as well as a poet, translator, editor, and film and
literary critic. He is the author of fifteen books in different genres.
His work has been published in magazines and newspapers in Argentina,
Brazil, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Italy, Peru, Spain, the United Kingdom,
and the United States. He has been Resident Writer for the Cheltenham
Festival of Literature in England (2003) and The Bellagio Study and
Conference Center in Italy (2008). In 2012 he was appointed Resident
Writer for the prestigious Hawthornden Retreat for Writers in Scotland.
In 2020 he was selected artist in residence for the Saari Residence in
Finland. Since 1995 he lives and works in Mexico City. Jason Ockert is the author of Wasp Box, a novel, and three collections of short stories: Shadowselves, Neighbors of Nothing, and Rabbit Punches. Winner of the Dzanc Short Story Collection Contest, the Atlantic Monthly Fiction
Contest, and the Mary Roberts Rinehart Award, he was also a finalist
for the Shirley Jackson Award and the Million Writers Award. His work
has appeared in journals and anthologies including Best American Mystery Stories, Granta, The Cincinnati Review, Oxford American, One Story, and McSweeney's. He teaches at Coastal Carolina University. Jeff Parker is the author of several books including Where Bears Roam the Streets: A Russian Journal, the novel Ovenman, and the short story collection The Taste of Penny.
He teaches prose in the MFA Program at the University of Massachusetts
Amherst, and he is the co-founder and director of the DISQUIET
International Literary Program in Lisbon, Portugal.