We Hate to Lose You, Mr. Lowsly by Susan Woodring

Winner of the Cupboard's 2013 Contest
39 pages. Tape-bound.

 

A story of disappearance, reincarnation, and living at the brink of a void, We Hate to Lose You, Mr. Lowsly is about how lives blossom and fade. A teacher slowly turns blue, two girls in a cornfield find a bottomless hole, a principal ready to retire not to another city but another life—Woodring’s world feels familiar only in its traumas and disappointments. Contest judge Kevin Wilson calls We Hate to Lose You, Mr. Lowsly “a story with a high degree-of-difficulty. The unexpected shifts in the narrative, each time bringing on another kind of magic, could easily have overwhelmed the sensitive and complicated work being done, but, in the hands of this writer, it pushes the story instead into a more wonderful and thrilling place. The ending, as perfect as it is strange, really blew me away.”

Susan Woodring is the author of a novel, Goliath (St. Martin’s Press, 2012), and a short story collection, Springtime on Mars (Press 53, 2008). Her short fiction has appeared in Isotope, Passages North, turnrow, and Surreal South, among other anthologies and literary magazines. Her work has twice been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and her short fiction was shortlisted for Best American Non-Required Reading 2008 and Best American Short Stories 2010. Susan writes and homeschools her two children, Abby and Aiden, in western North Carolina.