Laura van den Berg

Laura van den Berg's Story Collection Selected as B&N Discover Great Books Pick   July 23, 2009 - Ann Arbor, MI-Dzanc Books is excited to announce that Laura van den Berg's short story collection, What the World Will Look Like When All the Water Leaves Us, has been selected by Barnes and Nobleto be a Discover Great Books pick for the Holiday season.  The collection is set tobe published by Dzanc in mid-October and both Laura and Dzanc are excited to have What the World Will Look Like When All the Water Leaves Us continue to receive this sort of recognition.      The title story of Laura'scollection will appear in The Pushcart Prize XXXIV: Best of the Small Presses (November 2009, Pushcart Press).  Laura has also had another story from What The World Will Look Like When All the Water Leaves Us included in The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2008 (2008, Houghton Mifflin), and yet another that will be in Best New American Voices 2010 (October 2009, Mariner Books).  As for Dzanc Books, Laura's selection continues the high regard their books have received lately, in particular their short story collections.  The Kansas City Star included 3 collections published by Dzanc or their imprints in their Top 10 Story Collections of 2008.  Two Dzanc collections also won medals in last year's IPPY Awards.   Hannah Tinti, author of The Good Thief had this to say about What the World Will Look Like When All the Water Leaves Us:  "Laura van den Berg finds the tension between science and magic and walks it like a tightrope.  Any reader will be glad to have found it."   About Laura van den Berg   Laura van den Berg was raised in Florida and earned her MFA at Emerson College. She is the recipient of scholarships from the Bread Loaf and Sewanee Writers' Conferences, the 2009 Julia Peterkin Award, and the 2009-2010 Emerging Writer Lectureship at Gettysburg College. Her fiction has or will soon appear in One Story, Boston Review, Epoch, The Literary Review, American Short Fiction, StoryQuarterly, Best American Nonrequired Reading 2008, Best New American Voices 2010, and The Pushcart Prize XXIV: Best of the Small Presses, among other publications. The winner of the Dzanc Prize, Laura's first collection of stories, What the World Will Look Like When All the Water Leaves Us, will be published by Dzanc Books in October 2009.   About Dzanc Books   Dzanc Books was created in 2006 to advance great writing and champion those writers who don't fit neatly into the marketing niches of for-profit presses. As a non-profit, 501(c)3 organization, Dzanc Books not only publishes literary fiction, but works with literary journals, runs inexpensive online mentoring programs, and sponsors the Dzanc Prize which has a literary community service aspect to it.  Dzanc also fully committed to developing educational programs in schools. For more information on Dzanc Books and its mission, books, authors, awards, and programs, please visitwww.dzancbooks.org.