Phantoms

by Chad Simpson

The characters in Chad Simpson’s Phantoms are lost and struggling but constantly in motion — a brother upright after being run over by his own car, a retired father-in-law falling slowly off the grid, a young woman on a Midwestern bar stoop plotting a trip to Tunisia, a lonely sales rep whose mouth sags even when she smiles. In nine meticulously crafted short pieces, Simpson creates scenes covering vast emotional terrain where these characters emerge, imperfect and unfinished. In gestures large and small, kind and cruel, they push and pull at the fates laid out for them, constantly chasing the other versions of themselves they know will never quite become real.

27 pages, Kindle Edition

First published April 10, 2010

About the author

Chad Simpson is the winner of the 2012 John Simmons Short Fiction Award. His short story collection, "Tell Everyone I Said Hi," is forthcoming from the University of Iowa Press in October 2012.

Chad was raised in Monmouth, Illinois, and Logansport, Indiana. His stories and essays have appeared in "McSweeney's Quarterly," "The Sun," "Esquire," "Barrelhouse," "American Short Fiction," and many other print and online publications. He also is the author of a chapbook of short fiction, "Phantoms," published by Origami Zoo Press in 2010. A recipient of an Illinois Arts Council fellowship in prose, he teaches at Knox College in Galesburg, Illinois, where he received the Philip Green Wright/Lombard College Prize for Distinguished Teaching in 2010. He lives in Monmouth, Illinois, with his wife, Jane.