ALUMNA DEIRDRA MCAFEE’S ANTHOLOGY ‘LOCK & LOAD: ARMED FICTION’ EXAMINES AMERICA’S OBSESSION WITH GUNS
Check out McAfee’s interview with The American Goddess
By Creative Writing at The New School / in Fiction, Graduates, TNS Lit Scene
“Nothing says America louder than a gun.” The new anthology Lock & Load: Armed Fiction, published by the University of New Mexico Press and co-edited by Deirdra McAfee (MFA ’04), examines the use of guns in literary fiction, as objects and metaphors. It is the only such collection edited by women; women also wrote more than half the book’s “gun stories.”
In taking no “political stance,” the editors conceived the book as a way to spark reasonable conversation on a subject so politicized that it’s become almost impossible to discuss. Lock & Load: Armed Fiction brings readers stories by such distinguished American writers as Annie Proulx, John Edgar Wideman, Bonnie Jo Campbell, Pinckney Benedict, Rick DeMarinis, and Jim Tomlinson, as well as fresh, new stories by writers from across the country, chosen after a nationwide call.
Alumna Deirdra McAfee and her co-editor BettyJoyce Nash originated, organized, edited, and ushered Lock & Load: Armed Fiction into print. McAfee’s work has appeared in Tupelo Quarterly, Shenandoah, The Georgia Review, and elsewhere. Nash’s work has appeared in NDQ, Broad River Review, and elsewhere; she won the 2015 F. Scott Fitzgerald Short Story Prize.
