Dog on the Cross Stories

The focus of this striking and intense collection of stories is a small Pentecostal community in Oklahoma struggling with faith and lapses into sin during the week that a fifteen-year-old faith healer comes to town. From a preacher who loses his ability to speak in tongues and begins to fake it; to a man intent on suppressing his sinful love of his best friend even as he can think of nothing else; to a teenage boy who struggles with the temptation of a young girl; to a grandmother who will stop at nothing to make her grandson famous; their stories and others compose the debut collection of a young and original writer. In his careful articulation of faith and doubt, sin and self-delusion, allegiance to the church and self-aggrandization, Gwyn--raised Pentecostal by his grandparents--crafts stories that he is uniquely qualified to tell. We're pleased to be launching the career of one of the most distinctive new voices on the literary landscape.

Aaron Gwyn's stories have been published in Louisiana Literature, Glimmer Train, and Black Warrior Review and anthologized in New Stories from the South. He is currently at work on his first novel, Ink, about a tattoo repair artist. He lives with his wife in Charlotte, North Carolina, where he is an Assistant Professor of American Literature at UNC-Charlotte.