Literature, Fiction
ISBN: 9780990454649 (Print) 9780990454656 (eBook)
$14.00 (Print); $9.99 (eBook)
Paperback, eBook

About the Author

MELISSA REDDISH is the author of a flash fiction
collection, The Distance Between Us (Red Bird Chapbooks, 2013). Her stories, poems, and reviews have appeared in print and online journals. When not writing, she teaches English and directs the Honors Program at Wor-Wic Community College. She lives on the Eastern Shore of
Maryland with her husband, dog, and cat, where she does
stereotypical Eastern Shore things like eat crabs smothered in Old Bay and go for long walks down by the water with her black lab. She blogs very occasionally at
melissareddish.com.

My Father is an Angry Storm Cloud: Collected Stories

​Melissa Reddish

A film studies major gets a meat-processing job supervising the systematic dismemberment and disembowelment of chickens; a troubled loner finds the man of her dreams in a shoebox of horse figurines. College-educated, creative, and faced with no prospects to speak of,  Melissa Reddish’s hapless postmillennial protagonists stoically eke out monotonous existences as factory workers, retail sales clerks, and homemakers, staring down their limited lives even as the desperation of everyday life spirals into the no man’s land between fantasy and psychosis. Yet they are also clear-eyed and conscious, calmly aware of—and uncannily receptive to—the most devastating of life’s horrors. As Newpages states, "Reddish is nothing short of masterful in her handle of the short form, perfect for both the avid and the occasional reader."
Advance Acclaim for My Father is an Angry Storm Cloud: Collected Stories

“These stories are coming for you. Some are deliberate shadows and others are monster babies, but either way you will agree that with this collection of Hawthorne-inflected
tales Melissa Reddish claims a place as one of our most exciting American fabulists, alongside Kelly Link, Matt Bell, and Karen Russell.”
- Laura Ellen Scott, author of Death Wishing and The Juliet

“My Father Is an Angry Storm Cloud takes aimless characters from the mundane world of suburbs and dead-end jobs and places them in situations where saviors can quickly become enemies, imaginary friends go on rampages and feral children will literally eat your house.
Melissa Reddish is a brilliant storyteller who plays off our own fears of irrelevance and gives us something extraordinary to hold on to.”
- Jonathan Harper, author of Daydreamers

“Reddish populates her stories with miniature men, bus-driving ghosts, and babies growing in gardens. But she also populates them with parents, children, and lovers, all struggling to find connection. My Father is an Angry Storm Cloud reminds us it’s hardest to love the ones we hold closest.”
- Christy Crutchfield, author of How to Catch a Coyote