Tom Bodett once said that Homer, Alaska was "the farthest place you could go without a passport." The colorful cast of characters that inhabit this collection of interconnected stories live at the very end of the westernmost highway in North America, driven there by love and loneliness, God and greed. In the shadow of the snow capped peaks and ancient glaciers, they live out their lives-both comic and tragic-in hopes of getting through just one more day of salmon season. In this vivid, moving collection, Mark Lewandowski brings us the tough poetry of the Alaskan fishing industry, an end-of-the-world ecosystem of Slime-Line Queens and drunks, Born-Agains and sinners. Like the fish workers he describes, Lewandowski knows how to eviscerate. He peels back his characters' thick skins and removes their still-beating hearts. Halibut Rodeo is an arresting collection of stories about lonely people trying to find each other and hold on. -- Lili Wright, author of Learning to Float
Mark Lewandowski is an Associate Professor of English at Indiana State University. His stories and essays have appeared in many literary journals, including The North American Review, The Gettysburg Review, and The Florida Review. His essays have been listed as "Notable" in The Best American Travel Writing, and twice in The Best American Essays. His fiction has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, and has been listed as "Notable" in The Best American Nonrequired Reading. "Positioning," a short film taken from his screenplay and directed by Hans Montelius, premiered at the Short Film Corner at the Cannes Film Festival in 2009. It has since screened at eight other festivals.
In 1991, Mark joined the Peace Corps and taught English at a teacher's college in Biala Podlaska, Poland. He also taught creative writing and American Studies as a Fulbright Scholar at Siauliai University in Lithuania. He earned an MFA in Creative Writing from Wichita State University.
