Ethan Laughman 
Rituals to Observe 
Stories about Holidays from the Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction

These stories amount to something more than a celebration of the holidays dotting our calendars from month to month. Even though holidays can occasion a return to the familiar, these stories challenge traditional associations. Each story serves to complicate how we observe the human observation of holidays and offers a nuanced understanding of related themes such as family and motherhood, travel, grief and mourning processes, and memory. More generally, holidays are days of observance, and that aspect alone offers a lot to unpack.

About the author

SANDRA THOMPSON is a native of Chicago and a graduate of Ohio Wesleyan University and Brooklyn College, where she received her MFA. She lives in Tampa, Florida.