The Acorn Gathering: Writers Uniting Against Cancer [Paperback]

Duane Simolke (Author), Timothy Morris Taylor (Author), Jan Chandler (Author), Shawna R. Van Arum (Author), Huda Orfali (Author), Bill Wetzel (Author)

Book Description

Series: Writers Uniting Against Cancer | Publication Date: May 31, 2002

Join the fight against cancer by purchasing this fund-raiser by authors Jan Chandler, Shawna R. Van Arum, Huda Orfali, Duane Simolke, Timothy Morris Taylor, and Bill Wetzel. All author and editor royalties go to funding cancer research! These stories range from gritty and controversial to gentle and touching. Starting with the West Texas setting from Duane Simolke's collection The Acorn Stories, this new anthology takes readers across several landscapes, during times of trouble, change, hope, and triumph. Visit http://tagreviews.blogspot.com/ to read reviews.

Editorial Reviews

From the Author

The Acorn Gathering is the long-awaited spin-off from The Acorn Stories, a story cycle set in the fictional West Texas town of Acorn, published in 1998. Some of the tales in The Acorn Gathering continue plots from The Acorn Stories. The others use a variety of new settings and characters. This collection stands on its own, giving readers any background details they might need about the characters, so readers need not start with The Acorn Stories. Five writers joined me in contributing stories to this project. I invited the authors to share their talents and their vision. The resulting anthology provides a variety of voices more diverse than I ever created with my fictional narrators, yet more cohesive than I ever imagined. My original idea of setting all the stories in my fictional West Texas town of Acorn proved too limiting. Still, the writers paralleled each other’s stories with similar themes, issues, conflicts, and chance encounters. That cohesive echoing seemed especially surprising to me, since most of the authors wrote their stories before reading the other stories.

About the Author

Duane Simolke, Ph.D., wrote the iUniverse books The Acorn Stories, Degranon, Holding Me Together, and New Readings of Winesburg, Ohio. He edited and co-wrote The Acorn Gathering: Writers Uniting Against Cancer. His home page (duanesimolke.com) includes some of his writing, as well as a variety of links.

Product Details

• Paperback: 154 pages
• Publisher: iUniverse (May 31, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0595227880
• ISBN-13: 978-2913495043
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.1 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #4,320,803 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Duane Simolke (pronounced "Dwain Smoky"). Education: Belmont University (B.A., '89, Nashville, TN), Hardin-Simmons University (M.A., '91, Abilene, TX), and Texas Tech University (Ph.D., '96, Lubbock, TX), all with a major in English.

Writing published in nightFire, Mesquite, Caprock Sun, Midwest Poetry Review, International Journal on World Peace, and many other publications. Author or co-author of the following books. The Acorn Stories. Stein, Gender, Isolation, and Industrialism: New Readings of Winesburg, Ohio. Holding Me Together. Degranon: A Science Fiction Adventure. The Acorn Gathering: Writers Uniting Against Cancer. The Return of Innocence: A Fantasy Adventure.

Winner, Allbooks Reviewers Choice Award and four StoneWall Society Pride in the Arts Awards.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Acorns for Cancer, September 16, 2002

By 

W. Brian Moore (San Antonio, Texas United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Acorn Gathering: Writers Uniting Against Cancer (Paperback)

It was an extreme pleasure reading The Acorn Gathering. This talented group of writers have put together a wonderful collaboration of short stories. What makes this an outstanding buy is that all the royalties go to the American Cancer Society for cancer research. I highly recommend you going out, buying copies for yourself and your loved ones, and enjoy reading this book.

Each story in The Acorn Gathering deals with situations in life that most of us can easily relate to and have experienced. They deal with breast cancer, life on an Indian reservation, struggles of gay life in a small town, losing weight, divorce, coming to terms with feelings of an abandonment, and wonderful story about a hero who goes to New York City to help after the September 11 Terrorist Attacks, just to name a few. If you think none of those stories sound like you, wait until you read them and experience the way each writer brought those issues into a world we all understand. I found myself caught up in several of the stories, feeling at times, that they were about my own life. This collaborative work, even though it is made up of different short stories, has a common thread that runs throughout the book that gives it an unbroken flow. One story seems to lead right into the next even when they are dealing with new people and new topics. Duane Simolke had put this book in perfect reading order.

The Acorn Gathering has something for everyone. The stories will provoke happiness, laughter, sadness and sometimes anger. Each is an extremely poignant view into the life of people that are all around us. The subject matter is extremely diversified that not only will you enjoy this book but it will open your eyes to the broader picture of how life exists for others around you.

As a person who's life has been greatly impacted by cancer, I applaud the writers of The Acorn Gathering for sharing their talents with us through these stories and the proceeds to help find a cure for those with cancer. The American Cancer Society is a responsible choice to receive these funds. Your contribution by purchasing this book will be well spent. No better gift can be given to someone who is suffering from cancer, than hope. You support of this book will do just that.

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars AUTHOR WILLIAM MALTESE HIGHLY RECOMMENDS!, February 1, 2004

By A Customer

This review is from: The Acorn Gathering: Writers Uniting Against Cancer (Paperback)

I'd be out beating the drum for everyone to buy this slim anthology even if every story in it were as boring as watching paint dry, as amateurish as finger-paintings by kindergartners, and/or as lacking in literary merit as a porno flick. Because, all author and editor royalties from THE ACORN GATHERING go to the American Cancer Society, and there are few of us whose lives haven't in someway been negatively touched by cancer, whether as regards ourselves, our family members, our friends, and/or our acquaintances.

That said, I'm exceedingly happy that the six contributors provide "anything but" boring, amateurish, and/or lacking in literary merit. Not all of the stories, by the way, have cancer as a thematic. If Duane Simolke's short story, "Finding Acorns In Winter" does tell the poignant tale of a woman surviving breast cancer, juxtaposed against an earlier American Indian woman facing death by starvation, the same author's hilarious "Fat Diary" is about a "big-boned" woman trying to find love and lose weight. Bill Wetzel's wonderful "Nachos Are Green And Ducks Appear To Be Blue At Town Pump In Cut Back, Montana" is about just that. Jan Chandler's "The Gun" drips irony as a tale examining the pros and cons of gun control.

Back to Simolke -- his "The Last Few And The First Few" poignantly post-9/11, via one man's personal reflections on his past -- no potential reader should pay too much attention to this book being promoted as the "sequel" to that author's short-story collection, THE ACORN STORIES, published in 1998. At least as far as assuming anyone need have read the former to enjoy the latter. No need to fear getting lost in this book's story lines, not privy to essential background, because each short story stands entirely on its own.

Which isn't to say you should pass up any opportunity to read Simolke's THE ACORN STORIES. (The "Acorn" of both books, by the way, referring to the same small town of Acorn, west Texas). Simolke's right-on descriptions of life in rural America, no matter where you're lucky enough to find them, will have you never driving through any bit of U.S. countryside ever again without looking at it as far less idyllically bucolic than you might once have imagined.

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Gathering of Writers, July 14, 2002

By 

Ronald L. Donaghe - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Acorn Gathering: Writers Uniting Against Cancer (Paperback)

A vision Duane Simolke had for this book was that writers would contribute stories freely and that all proceeds from the sale would go to the American Cancer Society. Perhaps what he did not count on is that this "gathering" of writers has also produced an artistic realization rarely witnessed in anthologies. The various and individual voices of each story teller in this collection lends cadence and lyrics like an orchestra to a whole larger than the sum of its parts, from Simolke's humorous and "biting" "Fat Diary" to Shawna Chandler's haunting and beautiful "Flamenco Painter." Native Americans, Hispanics, African Americans, and even gay people delightfully form a cohesive voice in the fight against cancer and prejudice and hate. Also given voice, here, is how the destructive cancer of hate can ruin lives, and this message adds urgent notes in the orchestration of the whole. Read Bill Wetzel's two stories and you'll see how two disparate themes are unified by this collection; or read Huda Orfali's work and see how a continuing sub-theme is woven into this smart collection. In all, each story is a note or theme in a surprising whole. --Ronald L. Donaghe author of My Year of Living Heterosexually and Other Adventures in Hell.