The characters in Spells for Victory and Courage, winner of the Brighthorse Prize for Short Fiction, search for love and belonging in all the broken places. A teenage girl takes care of her ex-jockey father. A retired professor befriends the local shepherd. A carnival clown picks a fight with the wrong customer. And a door-to-door saleswoman peddles dreams of grandeur in the shadow of a defunct lumber mill. Although their circumstances differ, these characters all share on thing: their quest for connection in a lonely and fragmented world.
Spells for Victory and Courage is funny, smart, rich, and strange. And Dana Fitz Gale is a writer who grabs you by the scruff of the neck and won't let go.
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Dana Fitz Gale won the Brighthorse Prize in Short Fiction for her debut collection, Spells for Victory and Courage, which was also a finalist for the Flannery O'Connor Award and the Ohio State book prize. She has won numerous other awards for her fiction, which has recently appeared in The Georgia Review, The Hudson Review, Crazyhorse, and Prairie Schooner, among other places. She has an MFA from the University of Montana and lives in the Bitterroot Valley with her husband, their two sons, and a variety of animals.
(Broadcasts: 1/19/17; 7/20/17)
