Cities the Sea

In Cities in the Sea, Maura Stanton taps into the mysterious force of the fairy tale, with its fantastic images and magical narrative patterns. Her stories blur the boundaries between fairy tale and verité, and comment on the art of storytelling. A range of characters — from a business man to a pianist, from a county coroner to a hardware store clerk, from a Greek immigrant to a Danish artist — come to discover that the past is a ruined kingdom, lost forever, but still a place to visit in wish, dream, and memory. Throughout her stories, Stanton attempts to wrest a deeper pattern, full of humor and wonder, out of the disturbing events of contemporary life. Maura Stanton's previous books include the novel and the story collections and Stanton is a recipient of the Yale Series of Younger Poets award and a two-time winner of the PEN Syndicated Fiction Award. She teaches in the M.F.A. program at Indiana University.