Let The Rivers Clap Their Hands

Lumbermen from Kickapoo, teamsters from Missouri, Cornwall, the Germans, raised camps from the valleys and named this place Snake Hollow. The Black Hawk War fought itself out all around them. The lead that lay about like plant roots was collected and grew beyond their pails, straight to the stock exchange. Better than the potato eyes set in water to feed a man’s children through the winter.

PRAISE

Katherine Zlabek is a wonder. I know of very few writers who can so successfully combine the poignancy and emotional engagement of the traditional story with the bright artifice and the tonal and structural playfulness one sees in her work. These are agile, venturesome, touching, witty stories, and this is, I hope and believe, the start of a big career.

– Michael Griffith

Katherine Zlabek is a native of Wisconsin. Her work has appeared in Bellevue Literary Review, The Literary Review, and The Rumpus, among others. In 2012, she won an AWP Intro Journals Award. Her novel-in-stories Love Me, The World Is Mine has been a finalist in a number of competitions, including the Flannery O’Connor Short Fiction Award. She earned her MFA from Western Michigan University and her PhD from the University of Cincinnati, where she was a Taft Dissertation Fellow.  

Cover image is comprised of a vintage photograph of unknown origin or date, and a postcard mailer (“10 Candid Snap Shots” of the “Painted Desert & Petrified Forest”) published in 1949 by Southwest Post Card Co. Both are from the private collection of Cait Kovac.

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