Review of Fire Ants Appears in the Spring 2009 Issue of Phi Kappa Phi Forum

From the Spring 2009 issue of Phi Kappa Phi Forum: Venerable writer Lee Smith raves about this collection: “Gerald Duff’s great characters are all astonishing storytellers, with true and compelling voices that will ring in my head forever. Fire Ants is an American classic.” Esteemed wordsmith Roy Blount, Jr., offers similar praise on the back cover. “These stories are richly observed, keen-witted and tellingly sympathetic to a wide range of characters….” No wonder, then, that Duff (Phi Kappa Phi inductee at McKendree University in Lebanon, Ill.) won the Cohen Prize from Ploughshares magazine for the title story and was named a finalist for the Jesse Jones Award for the Best Book of Fiction published in 2007. In these serio-comic tales, the writer – who also has published numerous novels and some books of poetry – imagines a clutch of hurting people needing to feel better, from a middle-aged loner who kidnaps a cheerleader to watch her dance to a mother deciding the lengths she will go to in order to raise her son’s bail. To dip into the book, visit www.newsouthbooks.com/fireants.