Writing alumna Terese Svoboda '78 has recently published The Long Swim (University of Massachusetts Press, 2023), a compelling collection of stories exploring womanhood and humanity that was awarded the Juniper Prize for Fiction last year.
A runaway circus lion haunts a small town where two lovers risk more than their respective marriages. A junket to Cuba and an ambassador’s dalliance with a niece hide dark secrets and political revolution. “I’ve always had a knife,” says the unstable stepson to his parents. Inventive, dark, and absurd, Svoboda’s stories in The Long Swim capture a place of violence and uncertainty but also wild beauty, adventure, and love both lasting and ephemeral. Her characters strive for escape—through romance, travel, or more self-destructive pursuits—and collide with the constraints of family and home, their longing for freedom and autonomy often at odds with the desire for safety and harmony.
“These stories, so precise and joyful in language and movement, don’t hesitate to dive meaningfully into heaviness and honesty,” said Aimee Bender, author of The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake. “What musical and beautifully-written pieces to read aloud and savor.”
Terese Svoboda, author of 22 books of poetry, fiction, memoir, biography, and translations from the Nuer, has received the Guggenheim, Bobst Prize in fiction, Iowa Poetry Prize, NEH translation grant, Graywolf Nonfiction Prize, Jerome Foundation Prize in Video, the Appleman for a libretto, NEA media grants, the O. Henry Award, and Pushcart Prize for the essay. Three-time winner of the New York Foundation for the Arts fellowship, she has been awarded Headlands, James Merrill, Yaddo, MacDowell, Bogliasco, Hermitage, Hawthorden, and Bellagio residencies. Her opera, Wet, premiered at RedCat Theater in L.A.'s Disney Hall, and last year she was invited to the Sorbonne to discuss her work.
