Maryanne O'Hara

As I wrote CASCADE, I had a line by the great Irish Nobel laureate Seamus Heaney running through my head: You lose more of yourself than you redeem/Doing the decent thing/ I wanted CASCADE to explore "what is the 'decent' thing" and how does it differ from "what is right," and "who decides what is right?"

My characters struggle with reconciling their passions with their responsibilities. They face tough choices in a time period when many people--and even countries--were forced to make difficult choices.

I hope CASCADE provides readers with plenty to think about, discuss, and maybe even argue about. Thank you for reading.

Other biographical info: I was the longtime associate fiction editor at Ploughshares, Boston's award-winning literary journal. My short fiction has been published in The North American Review, Five Points, Redbook, The Crescent Review, and these anthologies: MicroFiction, Brevity and Echo, The Art of Friction, Sudden Flash Youth, and Fictionality/Reality/ Possibility. I am grateful for grants I received from the St. Botolph Foundation and the Massachusetts Cultural Council, and to the editors who nominated my stories for Pushcart Prizes. My story collection was a finalist for 2010's Flannery O'Connor Award for Short Fiction.