SLEEP TIGHT SATELLITE (Carol Guess)
“Carol Guess builds the most wondrous word-nests, each one holding something precious, each one surrounded by the world-at-large, afire. In remarkable lyrical fiction after another, Carol Guess writes her heart out.”
—Randall Brown, author of Mad to Live, founder of Matter Press
SLEEP TIGHT SATELLITE
A Collection of Short Stories
by Carol Guess
Tupelo Press
October 2023
978-1-946482-90-7 | $21.95 | Paperback
The concept of a chosen family is not new, especially to the queer community, but as forces in our society continue to ostracize and harm individuals, groups of like-minded people find solace, support, and strength among their friends. This connection is uniquely different from a family of origin or a community at large, and is often what allows individuals to survive and thrive.
In Carol Guess’s innovative collection of short stories, SLEEP TIGHT SATELLITE (October 2023), interlinked queer characters face the all too familiar challenges that have erupted in the United States in the past seven years. While these stories center around the fight for survival during Trump-era politics and the Covid-19 pandemic, readers see how the intuition of these characters was honed long before these recent barriers.
The friends and lovers in SLEEP TIGHT SATELLITE reject the violent pseudo-communities that have formed all around them. A white woman’s lover, a white police officer, may have committed a violent crime. A woman leaves her lovers behind and travels to a seaside town to help an abandoned child. A scientist tries to escape the state surveillance that comes with their job as a satellite engineer.
Told with humor and lyrical language, these stories invite readers to linger with characters they feel as if they’ve always known.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
CAROL GUESS is the author of twenty books of poetry and prose, including Doll Studies: Forensics and Tinderbox Lawn. A frequent collaborator, she writes across genres and illuminates historically marginalized material. In 2014 she was awarded the Philolexian Award for Distinguished Literary Achievement by Columbia University. She is Professor of English at Western Washington University, where she teaches Queer Studies and Creative Writing. She lives in Bellingham, WA.