In Zugzwang – Stories of Ilion Heights

Scheduled for publication by Pierian Springs Press on February 24, 2025.

In Zugzwang – Stories of Ilion Heights is a short story collection that was a finalist for the Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction sponsored by the University of Georgia Press and for the St. Lawrence Book Award sponsored by Black Lawrence Press.  The title comes from the chess world where to be “in Zugzwang” is a situation where you must move, but that move will either put you at greater disadvantage or result in you being checkmated by your opponent’s next move.

The collection is a set of ten linked short stories with several common elements, time, location, theme, and characters.  The time is the present.  The location is Ilion Heights, an urban slum which is the last neighborhood at the end of the world.  The themes are work and the role of work, or the lack thereof, in the lives of the characters and the impact of growing up and living in a slum neighborhood with few options for escape, i.e. being in zugzwang.