MEGAN STAFFEL

LESSONS IN ANOTHER LANGUAGE

2011 IPPY AWARD: Bronze Medal Winner in the Short Story
2011 FORE WORD REVIEWS BOOK OF THE YEAR AWARD: Silver Medal Winner in the Short Story,

Four Stories and A Novella

"Megan Staffel does rural and urban, adolescence and adulthood, tough and tender, story and novella, with equal felicity and grace. The range of this collection--emotional and formal--is as astonishing as her rich and tender evocation of what it is to be alive. This is a book with a vigilant spirit, built to linger and bloom." Michael Parker

"Each of these vividly imagined, richly peopled stories invites the reader into a complete world, and each demonstrates how well Megan Staffel understands the degree to which our lives are defined by family, place, and money. In prose both lyrical and colloquial she depicts the lives of characters hovering on the edge of mystery. Lessons in Another Language is a lovely and illuminating collection." Margot Livesey

"I didn't just read this book. It was one of the rare ones that could be savored. The flow of prose unwinding transparent and tensile as spider silk, lightness catching the light." Stuart Dybek

"I found myself in Detroit, just a 40-minute flight away from Milwaukee, on an airplane that would not take off. We weren't allowed off the plane for several hours, and while on the plane, we weren't allowed any
electronic distractions. But thank God, because that meant I not only got to read your beautiful new book, LESSONS IN ANOTHER LANGUAGE,but I got to read it the way everyone should, in one great, giddy gulp. I was just amazed - every story was so sure-footed." Liam Callanan

"I had the delicious experience of reading LESSONS IN ANOTHER LANGUAGE cover-to-cover on long day from Portland-Oregon to Dallas flights, with long layovers, and enjoyed it utterly in every way - so well-written, haunting, compelling, suspenseful -- so many well-drawn characters, the younger point-of-view I so often miss in books - perfect. May this book find many friends! BRAVO.
Favorites: Daily Life of the Pioneers, the Linguist -- but actually - every one of them." Naomi Shihab Nye

Biography

Megan Staffel is the author of two novels, THE NOTEBOOK OF LOST THINGS ( Soho Press) and SHE WANTED SOMETHING ELSE ( North Point Press) and two collections of short stories, LESSONS IN ANOTHER LANGUAGE (Four Way Books) and A LENGTH OF WIRE AND OTHER STORIES (Pym-Randall Press). Her short stories have appeared in numerous journals including TheNorthwest Review, Ploughshares, Gargoyle, The New England Review, The Seattle Review, and The Kansas Quarterly. Her stories have been short listed in Best American Short Stories and nominated for The Pushcart Prize.

Megan has taught at the University of Iowa, Kansas State University, Rochester Institute of Technology and Vermont College. Presently, she teaches in the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College. She lives with her husband on an old dairy farm in a small town in western New York and has two adult children.