Robert Day has invented a new form, the Chance Encounters of a Literary Kind memoirs?brief, whimsical, sometimes touching, reminiscences about his brushes (often friendships) with literary greatness. He treats Shakespeare, William Stafford, Mavis Gallant, John Barth, Ray Carver, Walter Bernstein, and Michael de Montaigne. Some he met and knew in person; others he met in his mind. But the collision is sparkling in its reverent irreverence, airy, gossamer-thin, a playful and informal jeu d?esprit that takes itself not very seriously, yet with flashes of seriousness and wit.
About the Author: Robert Day's novel The Last Cattle Drive was a Book-of-the-Month Club selection. His short fiction has won a number of awards and citations, including two Seaton Prizes, a Pen Faulkner/NEA prize, and Best American Short Story and Pushcart citations. His fiction has been published by Tri-Quarterly, Black Warrior Review, Kansas Quarterly, North Dakota Quarterly, and New Letters among other belles-lettres magazines. He is the author of two novellas, In My Stead and The Four Wheel Drive Quartet, as well as three collections of short fiction: Speaking French in Kansas, Where I Am Now, and The Billion Dollar Dream.His nonfiction has been published in the Washington Post Magazine, Smithsonian Magazine, Forbes FYI, Modern Maturity, World Literature Today, American Scholar, and Numero Cinq. As a member of the Prairie Writers Circle his essays have been reprinted in numerous newspapers and journals nationwide, and on such internet sites as Counterpunch. Recent book publications include We Should Have Come By Water (poems), The Committee to Save the World (literary non-fiction), and Chance Encounters of a Literary Kind (memoirs). Forth-coming publications include: Let Us Imagine Lost Love (a novel, Fall 1015), and Robert Day for President: an Embellished Campaign Autobiography (Spring, 2016).Among his awards and fellowships are a National Endowment to the Arts Creative Writing Fellowship, Yaddo and McDowell Fellowships, a Maryland Arts Council Award, and the Edgar Wolfe Award for distinguished fiction. His teaching positions include The Iowa Writers Workshop; The University of Kansas; and the Graduate Faculty at Montaigne College, The University of Bordeaux.He is past Acting President of the Associated Writing Programs; the founder and former Director of the Rose O'Neill Literary House; and founder and Publisher of the Literary House Press at Washington College, Chestertown, Maryland.