Sundress Publications announces that pre-orders are now open for Pure Fear, American Legend by Indiana-based author Laura Dzubay. In this debut short story collection, Dzubay roots the readers in the mundane, the extraordinary, and the spaces in between. Ranging from the unsuccessful love life of a personified dust devil, to a thirteen-year-old’s perspective as she is kidnapped after school by one of her mother’s many eccentric exes, to a small town rattled by the discovery of a cell phone years before its invention, these stories investigate love, nature, and liminality in fresh and dazzlingly unique ways. Ending with the titular story in which an unprepared girl is compelled to save another from imminent danger only she has noticed, Dzubay’s introspective voice binds Pure Fear, American Legend, leaving readers lingering on the page after each story before turning with excitement to the next.
Michael Byers considers Pure Fear, American Legend to be “full of beautiful new nightmares” that is “unusually gripping, sharp and scary, this is a wicked, striking debut collection”. Alexander Weinstein adds that “Laura Dzubay’s tales are of characters with good hearts who navigate personal geographies of hurt amid the real and imagined monsters of this world.” Finally, Michelle Pretorius applauds how “with razor-sharp prose and richly drawn characters, these stories explore the liminal spaces of adolescence, where terror and wonder collide.”
You can find a copy of Pure Fear, American Legend on the Sundress website.
Laura Dzubay is a writer and teacher from Indiana. Her stories and essays feautured in Electric Literature, TIMBER, Gulf Coast, and elsewhere. She earned her MFA from Indiana University, winning the AWP Intro Prize. She loves music, camping, and hiking. In 2022, she completed a thru-hike of the Appalachian Trail.
