A Warm Breath (Kindle Single) (Ploughshares Solos Book 9)

In this gripping and wide-ranging essay, Nadelson deals with his grief after the premature death of a close friend, coupled with the joy accompanying the birth of his first child. Everything he now does—from caring for his daughter to wandering the streets of his run-down neighborhood in Oregon—starts to feel like a betrayal. Nadelson looks over his life, thinking about his run-in with a Soho cab driver, a college Halloween party spent with his dead friend, and his favorite Chekhov story, “Grief.” Over the course of the essay, Nadelson tries to understand why he is falling apart and what he can do to put himself back together.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Scott Nadelson is the author of three story collections, most recently Aftermath. His memoir, The Next Scott Nadelson: A Life in Progress, appeared from Hawthorne Books in March 2013. A winner of the Samuel Goldberg & Sons Fiction Prize for Emerging Jewish Writers, the Reform Judaism Fiction Prize, the Oregon Book Award for short fiction, and the Great Lakes Colleges Association New Writers Award, he teaches creative writing at Willamette University and in the Rainier Writing Workshop MFA Program at Pacific Lutheran University.

PRAISE FOR SCOTT NADELSON

“In The Next Scott Nadelson, the title figure is honest, open, and searching, and his presence on the page is truly consoling: his patient excavation of his life will help readers understand their own." —David Shields, author of Reality Hunger: A Manifesto

"A poignant meditation on love, literature, and the pains as well as the perverse pleasures of loneliness. Nadelson chronicles his life in progress with the wry, warm honesty of an old friend catching up after many years. He reminds us that the world can be simultaneously huge and miniscule, that what we read and see and remember is at once nothing and everything, that wholeness is much greater than any sum total you can imagine." —Meghan Daum, author of Life Would Be Perfect If I Lived In That House