Paul Luikart - ANIMAL HEART
A cabbie with a booze problem pities a murderer and helps him flee into the desert. A homeless woman teaches a businessman how to dance. A bank robber on the run does the only compassionate thing he's ever done in his life when he encounters a band of wild horses. A man hunts and kills his romantic rival, then presents the love of his life with a grisly token of his affection.
The stories in Paul Luikart's ANIMAL HEART address lives in transition, focusing on raggedy characters in need of redemption--whether they realize it or not.
Paul Luikart's work has appeared or is forthcoming in Barrelhouse, Burnside Writers Collective, Chicago Quarterly Review, Curbside Splendor, Hobart, Johnny America, Pacifica Literary Review, Relief Journal, WhiskeyPaper, Yalobusha Review and others. His MFA is from Seattle Pacific University. He lives in Chattanooga, Tennessee where he directs a shelter for homeless families.
Cameron Dezen Hammon is a writer and musician living in Houston, Texas. Her essays and poems have appeared in or are forthcoming from The Houston Chronicle, The Literary Review, The Butter, Columbia Poetry Review, Gigantic Sequins, NYLON Magazine, and elsewhere. She earned an MFA in Creative Writing from Seattle Pacific University, and her latest musical endeavor, a feminist re-write of fourteen, 80s pop songs, was recently released through Pledge Music. Find her www.camerondezenhammon.com