The Uninnocent (31 page)

Authors: Bradford Morrow

BOOK: The Uninnocent

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

My deepest gratitude to friends who encouraged me over the years while I was writing these dark stories, friends who themselves are full of light: Peter Straub, Martine Bellen, Pat Sims, Mike Kelly, Thomas Johnson, Micaela Morrissette, J. W. McCormack, Nicole Nyhan, and Can Xue. Thanks also to my inspiring colleagues at Bard College, among them Mary Caponegro, Robert Kelly, Edie Meidav, and MichÃ¨le Dominy. As well, I'd like gratefully to acknowledge the stellar work Lorie Pagnozzi, Maria Fernandez, Jerry Kelly, and Phil Gaskill did during the production of
The Uninnocent
.

I want to thank the editors who published early versions of these stories in magazines and anthologies: Betsy Sussler, M. Mark, Joyce Carol Oates, Raymond Smith (fondly remembered), Patrick McGrath, Howard Norman, Steve Erickson, Peter Straub, James Ellroy, Bill Henderson, Laura Furman, and the redoubtable Otto Penzler, who in many ways godfathered this collection.

To my perspicacious agent and friend, Henry Dunow; to my intrepid editors, Claiborne Hancock and Jessica Case, who nurtured this book into being; and, as ever, to Cara Schlesingerâblessings to all of you for believing in these stories and for your kindnesses along the way.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

B
RADFORD MORROW
is the author of the novels
Come Sunday, The Almanac Branch, Trinity Fields, Giovanni's Gift, Ariel's Crossing
, and
The Diviner's Tale
. He has been the recipient of numerous awards, including the Academy Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and O. Henry and Pushcart prizes. Morrow is the founding editor of the widely acclaimed literary journal
Conjunctions
, for which he received the 2007 PEN/Nora Magid Award, and is a professor of literature and Bard Center Fellow at Bard College. He divides his time between New York City and a farmhouse in upstate New York.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this ebook onscreen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.

These are works of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

These stories first appeared, often in somewhat different form, in the following magazines and anthologies: “The Hoarder”:
Murder in the Rough and Best American Noir Stories of the Century
. “Gardener of Heart”:
Conjunctions, Paraspheres: Fabulist and New Fabulist Stories
, and
Poe's Children
. “Whom No Hate Stirs None Dances”:
Bomb
. “Amazing Grace”:
Conjunctions
and
Pushcart Prize XXVII
. “The Uninnocent”:
The Village Voice Literary Supplement
. “Tsunami”: Black Clock. “(Mis)laid”:
Conjunctions
. “All the Things That Are Wrong with Me”:
Ontario Review
. “The Enigma of Grover's Mill”:
New Jersey Noir
. “Ellie's Idea”: published as “Sylvia's Idea” in
Ontario Review
. “The Road to NadÃªja”:
The New Gothic
. “Lush”:
Ontario Review
and
The O. Henry Prize Stories, 2003
.