Greetings!

Thanks to all you astute readers out there, Dinner With Osama has won Foreword Magazine’s Bronze prize for the best collection of short stories published in 2008.

And in May Ghost Road Press released Swear the Burning Vow: Selected and New Poems. I’m proud of the stunning artwork on the cover by Riva Sweetrocket, a talented pastel artist voted one of Denver’s top ten artists of 2008, proud because she’s my daughter. And Swear the Burning Vow is now a finalist for this year's Colorado Book Award in poetry!

If you haven’t yet read these two books, please order them at you local independent bookstore—we must keep those independents going!

And all of you who are aspiring writers, look for the writing exercises on this website.

Warmly,

Krysl is funny, fierce, and feminist in the best possible way, and a technician of variety and resourcefulness.
I read her short stories with considerable pleasure, surprise, and admiration.

                     —John Updike

A strong story collection from  Krysl (How To Accommodate Men, 1998) showcasing a feminist, leftist, postmodernist, funny voice.

Colorado’s own Sheila, in the title story, is PC in extremis, besotted by a Boulder where you “can order arias sung for the spleen tailored to your personal astro printout and, if the acupuncturist recommends it, get a liver massage.” Her sister’s son is killed in the Towers, she’s grieving, but also scheming for nothing less than world peace. Her plan: to seduce Osama bin Laden with a meal of “Alaskan Salmon a la Tetsuya marinated in fresh basil, coriander, thyme, and grape seed oil.”  Sure enough the Evildoer, complete with dialysis machine and Koranic quotes, arrives at her place for din-din. And even while he blusters—“I’m Islam’s version of The Rock”—so smitten is he with the eats and the chef that he actually contemplates a talk with George W. Bush. If Bush will meet his requests, including backing out of Saudi Arabia, bin Laden will “call off jihad and send our women to college.” Krysl has a thing for Boulder, even more so, a life with allusions to the paintings of Mary Cassatt, and “Cherry Garcia, Pistachio Cream” is a beauteously real portrayal of mother/daughter bonding. The more political Krysl gets, the bleaker the results—think William Burroughs without the Misogyny. Her piece “Welcome to the Torture Center, Love,” concerning a night journey through the inferno that is war-torn Sudan, is a dazzler.
A compassionate and incendiary work.

                     —Kirkus Reviews