In this chapbook, you will find the first chapters of Carnival for the Gods, and the three novels that form a sequence from Gladys Swan’s comic fantasy, first published in the Vintage Contemporaries Series. The World of Carnival, continues with its original inhabitants and their struggles against the odds: Alta and Dusty, who dream big; the midget Curran, who undertakes a journey at the behest of the acrobat Elise, whose son has gone mad (Small Wonder); the Kid, who, after a long search, sets out to find the Seventh City, picking up along the way a melancholy Jew, who grew up there (The Dreamseekers). And, finally, a return to Alta, who finds herself drawn back to the circus to follow another set of dreams (Down to Earth). The series of novels explores the relations between life and art, reality and illusion, the openness to possibility and the capacity for the renewal of energies within a culture.

Author: Gladys Swan
Paperback : 104 pages
ISBN-10 : 0982546238
ISBN-13 : 978-0982546239

About the Author

Gladys Swan has published two novels, Carnival for the Gods (Vintage Contemporaries Series) and Ghost Dance: A Play of Voices, nominated by LSU Press for the Pen/Faulkner Award. She has published six collections of short fiction, the most recent being A Garden Amid Fires. Her short fiction has appeared in such literary magazines as the Kenyon Review, Sewanee Review, Virginia Quarterly Review, Shenandoah, Manoa, Ohio Review, and Prairie Schooner, where she was awarded the Lawrence Foundation Prize for Fiction. In 200l, she received the Tate Prize for Poetry from the Sewanee Review. She was awarded one of the first Open Fellowships from the Lilly Endowment for a study of Inuit art and mythology and has held residencies at Yaddo, the Fundacion Valpariso in Spain, and the Chateau de Lavigny in Switzerland, and the Martha’s Vineyard Writers’ Residency. She has received various fellowships for residencies in painting at the Vermont Studio Center, where she has also been a Guest Writer.