Blue Cathedral: Short Fiction for the New Millennium

by Kate Gale (Editor), Mark E. Cull (Editor)

We began in the dark, and from the dark, we created myths, stories, the children of Israel wandering in the wilderness, Odysseus returning home, Buddha sitting lotus quiet. We had a few good stories to sustain our wanderings.


Over several thousand years, the fire of myths began to burn out. Or we burned them out. We burned Troy, the prophets, and Joan of Arc, and finally, as one myth after another descended onto the pile of ashes, we found ourselves outside the church, the cathedral, the pyramid, the synagogue, with no path, and no journey. No Holy Grail to seek for, no reason to seek a grail. We pick up the skull of the storyteller, turn it over in our hands, fumbling for the eye sockets that used to see something. We don't know how to handle the skull, with what ritual to bury it, what song to sing for the dead or the living. The stories in this collection, address this place in which we've found ourselves, more aware of the dead than the living. The dead had their myths and their fire.

376 pages, Paperback

First published January 15, 2000

About the author

Dr. Kate Gale is managing editor of Red Hen Press, editor of the Los Angeles Review, and president of the American Composers Forum, LA. She was the 2005-2006 president of PEN USA. She is author of five books of poetry: her most recent, Mating Season, from Tupelo Press; a novel, Lake of Fire; and Rio de Sangre, a libretto for an opera with composer Don Davis. Her most recent projects include a co-written libretto, Paradises Lost with Ursula K. LeGuin and composer Stephen Taylor, and a libretto adapted from Kindred by Octavia Butler with composer Billy Childs. Her new poetry collection, Goldilocks Zone, will be released by University of New Mexico Press in February 2014. She lives in Los Angeles with her husband and children.