Praise for In the Middle of Many Mountains

“Nahal Suzanne Jamir is a startling writer. Her work defies simple categorization, and I find myself a little breathless sometimes, story to story, page to page, line to line. This is a wonderful, boldly experimental debut by a unique new voice. Here is a brilliant mind at work. Make way!”

 —Julianna Baggott, author of the Pure trilogy

“When it comes to every new phase of life, every new problem encountered, we react with splintered cultural and generational instincts, with sympathy and outrage, both wanting and disdaining the old stories that tell us how to proceed. In a voice lavish and yet improbably concise, Nahal Suzanne Jamir has written a profoundly beautiful book about the persistence of collective memory—how we lonely humans trapped in a single life seek the wisdom handed down to us and chafe against it, too.” 

—Debra Monroe, author of On the Outskirts of Normal and Shambles

"Nahal Suzanne Jamir is a gatherer of story. In this collection, we are given the chance to join her, to gather and examine story from every angle, from every corner. We see characters battle with their own stories, we witness the unreliability of story, or the weight of stories that have been passed down like an heirloom table that nobody has room for. And we also see that story is "a magic that is real"; story helps remember the truth; stories are for loneliness. But Jamir doesn't sit in an armchair simply discussing the elements of story--she gives us an abundance of the real thing--magical examples of stories that do help us remember, that do make us less lonely, that do remind us of our own truths. Jamir writes with a lightness that effortlessly weaves in and out of myth, reality, and even time-travel, and is grounded with the occasional still assurances, the things she knows to be true. 'Now this, this makes sense to me . . . ' she writes. She is a caring and wise storyteller, giving her listener places to land, to pause, to rest. And then pushing us on, for 'the most difficult stories to tell must be told again and again, to defeat the mirrors.' This collection does just that."

—Brianna Van Dyke, editor of Ruminate Magazine

About the Author

Nahal Suzanne Jamir earned her PhD from Florida State University. Her work has been published in or is forthcoming in The South Carolina Review, Jabberwock Review, Meridian, The Los Angeles Review, Crab Orchard Review, Carolina Quarterly, Ruminate Magazine, and Passages North. She won First Prize in the 2012 William Van Dyke Short Story Prize, by Ruminate Magazine, for “Stories My Mother Told Me,” Second Prize in the 2012 Press 53 Open Awards in Flash Fiction for “Foundling,” and Third Place in the 2010 Glimmer Train Very Short Fiction Award for “In Perfect English.”