susan taylor chehak

Publications

As Kathryn Dow
“Dow’s ambitiously imaginative debut novel questions the very nature of reality… [a] diverting exploration of metaphysical concepts. Winsome and smartly playful.” —Kirkus Reviews
When her father bumps his head and collapses, in Linwood, Iowa; June, 2006, Alma doesn't know what to do. And then she does.
Fiction
Mouse Wendler's account of her father's disappearance in Linwood, Iowa, June 2006.
"Chehak's prose provides a seamless, calm flow to a novel whose elements of love and murder ripple enticingly, fully surfacing only gently, only eventually, in the most satisfying kind of storytelling." -Booklist
"Haunting . . . Clodine Wheeler is the bemused narrator who strings together brilliant beads of descriptive phrases as she sorts through her memories . . . Chehak skillfully depicts small-town meanness and ironic generosity . . . . Her mesmerizing tale has classic resonances." – Publishers Weekly
"A dark tale of obsession among the posh ranks of a midwestern town... Chehak's poetic style exposes the passionate longings beneath the mannered sterling-and-crystal patina of Cedar Hill life; she renders both violence and love with an unflinching eye and casts a mournful spell." -Vogue
"Chehak is a very accomplished storyteller, always in control of her narrative, which moves ahead with grace and speed. But it's not only the plot that matters to this writer. It's the telling little details, particularly of teenage angst and of domestic life that makes the novel rich... SMITHEREENS is a novel fully worthy of the title thriller. It's hard to put down. It has a kind of dark allure." - The Los Angeles Times
“In Susan Taylor Chehak’s skilled hands, Iowa becomes the seething, steamy setting for a tale of pure evil… This is a marvelous, creepy story.” -The Kansas City Star
Short Stories
Read it in The Adirondack Review
Now available at Amarillo Bay
Now available at Necessary Fiction: Part One and Part Two
Now available at Juked
read it in the Spring 2012 issue of Folio by subscribing HERE
available online at Folly
available online at Word Riot
read it in the Spring 2011 issue of Coe Review by subscribing HERE
Now available at Guernica Magazine
read it on your Kindle, or your Kindle App
Online Projects
Nonfiction

What's New

What Happened To Paula: The Anatomy of a True Crime

February 24, 2012

Attempt to locate

anatomy n [LL anatomia dissection, fr. GK anatomē, fr. Anatemnein to dissect, fr. ana- + temnein to cut – more at TOME] 1 : a branch of morphology that deals with the structure of organisms 2 : a treatise on anatomic science or art 3 : the art of separating the parts of an animal or plant in order to ascertain theirposition, relations, structure, and function : DISSECTION 4 obs : a body dissected or to be dissected 5 : structural makeup esp. of an organism or any of its parts 6 : a separating or dividing into parts for detailed examination : ANALYSIS 7 a (1) : SKELETON (2) : MUMMY b : the human body

…I asked myself – “Of all melancholy topics, what, according to the universal understanding of mankind, is the most melancholy?” Death – was the obvious reply. “And when,” I said, “is this most melancholy of topics most poetical?” … the answer, here also, is obvious – “When it most closely allies itself to Beauty: The death, then, of a beautiful woman is, unquestionably, the most poetical topic in the world …” –Edgar Allan Poe, The Philosophy of Composition

See the whole story here: http://www.whathappenedtopaula.com/

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