The Mayflies - by Sara Veglahn (Paperback)

About the Book

Haunted by ghosts, a woman must make sense of what is real and what is a dream.

Book Synopsis

Obsessed with bodies of water and haunted by a chorus of mysterious ladies, the unnamed protagonist desperately searches for what is real and what is a dream. A deep and vivid exploration of the passageway between life and death, The Mayflies is a lyrical and haunting look at loneliness, isolation, and moving on.

Sara Veglahn is the author of two chapbooks, Another Random Heart (2009) and Closed Histories (2008). She holds an MFA from University of Massachusetts-Amherst and a PhD from the University of Denver, and has also taught creative writing at Regis University and Naropa University. She lives in Denver, Colorado.

Review Quotes

Praise for The Mayflies

"There is a hole in Sara Veglahn's, The Mayflies, as deep as an arm is long and full of water. I keep returning to this hole, which seems dug from the wondrous dirt of Werner Herzog's Kaspar Hauser and filled with fierce water, albeit fresh, drawn from Virginia Woolf's The Waves. Like these works -- and I am well aware of what it is I am implying: Veglahn is a brilliant writer and this is a brilliant book -- The Mayflies is full of mystery and illumination, fear and hope, the very dark and the very light." -Laird Hunt, author of Kind One, Ray of the Star, Indiana, Indiana

"Inside of this work, you will hear your own heart beat. A book of saturations, the cloud-sea of parts that constellate into birth charts that we jump through: here is a text offering entry into the silence between the tick and the tock, which is none other than a door, opening to the mystery of being and having been. A primer for consulting invisible logics and divining disturbances, The Mayflies compassionately approaches ways we might survive our repetitions and find our way home. It is a profound work of literature." -Selah Saterstrom, author of The Pink Institution and The Meat and Spirit Plan

"The first time I heard Sara Veglahn read, I was blown away - and I am grateful to say her writing holds up just as mind-blowingly on the page. The Mayflies is a mytho-biography of a species, a gender, a landscape, an ecosystem. From the stuff of water and mud and flesh and time and words, Veglahn crafts a genesis story that both explains and opens a mystery. This is a beautiful book." -Rebecca Brown, author of American Romances, The Gifts of the Body, and Haunted Houses

About the Author

Sara Veglahn is the author of the chapbooks The Ladies: an excerpt (New Herring Press, 2013), Another Random Heart (Letter Machine Editions, 2009) and Closed Histories (Noemi Press, 2008). Her work has been published in various journals, including Conjunctions, Web Conjunctions, Fence, 1913: A Journal of Forms, Fairy Tale Review, Octopus, Tarpaulin Sky, and elsewhere. She holds an MFA from UMass-Amherst and a PhD from the University of Denver. She currently lives in Denver, Colorado.