All the Keys to All the Doors

by Clare Beams, Megan Mayhew Bergman (Foreword)

“In 'All the Keys to All the Doors,' we read the classically beautiful line, “Middleford was a tablecloth of a town,” — but any reader lulled into believing they are in for a temperate tale awakens a few sentences later. If one looks deeply at the stories in Clare’s accomplished debut collection, We Show What We Have Learned, one sees the way — with their strange and occasionally grotesque notes — that these stories reach out to contemporary pain and questions.” - Megan Mayhew Bergman

About the Author: Clare Beams is the author of the forthcoming story collection, We Show What We Have Learned (Lookout Books, October 2016). Her stories appear in One Story, n+1, Ecotone, The Common, the Kenyon Review, Hayden’s Ferry Review, and The Best American Nonrequired Reading, and have received special mention in The Best American Short Stories 2013 and The Pushcart Prize XXXV. She is the recipient of awards from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, and currently blogs for Ploughshares. After teaching high school English for six years in Falmouth, Massachusetts, she moved with her husband and daughter to Pittsburgh, where she teaches creative writing at Saint Vincent College and the Pittsburgh Center for the Arts.

About the Guest Editor: Megan Mayhew Bergman studied anthropology at Wake Forest University, and completed graduate degrees at Duke University (MA) and Bennington College (MFA). She has had fellowships from Breadloaf and the Millay Colony for the Arts. The Fellowship of Southern Writers awarded her the Garrett Award for Fiction in April 2015. The American Library in Paris awarded her a fellowship for 2016. Scribner published her first story collection, Birds of a Lesser Paradise, in March 2012, which was a Barnes and Noble Discover pick, Indie Next selection, and one of Huffington Post’s Best Books of 2012. Scribner also published Almost Famous Women, in January 2015, also an Indie Next selection, and NEIBA Bestseller. She has a novel under contract and writes regular essays for Salon and Ploughshares. She was raised in North Carolina and now lives on a small farm in Vermont.

About the Publisher: Recommended Reading is the weekly fiction magazine of Electric Literature, publishing here every Wednesday morning. In addition to featuring our own recommendations of original, previously unpublished fiction, we invite established authors, indie presses, and literary magazines to recommend great work from their pages, past and present. Follow Recommended Reading on Medium and never miss the latest issue, or become a member for full access to the archives. For other links from Electric Literature, follow us, or sign up for our eNewsletter.

27 pages, Kindle Edition

Published October 23, 2016

About the author

Clare Beams’s novel The Illness Lesson, published in February of 2020 by Doubleday, was named a New York Times Editors’ Choice, a best book of 2020 by Esquire and Bustle, and a best book of February by Time, O Magazine, and Entertainment Weekly; it has been longlisted for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize. Her story collection, We Show What We Have Learned, was published by Lookout Books in 2016; it won the Bard Fiction Prize, was longlisted for the Story Prize, and was a Kirkus Best Debut of 2016, as well as a finalist for the PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize, the New York Public Library’s Young Lions Fiction Award, and the Shirley Jackson Award. A new novel, The Garden, will be published by Doubleday in 2023. Her fiction appears in One Story, n+1, Ecotone, The Common, the Kenyon Review, Hayden’s Ferry Review, Electric Literature’s Recommended Reading, and The Best American Nonrequired Reading, and has received special mention in The Best American Short Stories 2013 and The Pushcart Prize XXXV. She has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference, the Sewanee Writers' Conference, and the Sustainable Arts Foundation. After teaching high school English for six years in Falmouth, Massachusetts, she moved to Pittsburgh, where she now lives with her husband and two daughters. She has taught creative writing at Carnegie Mellon University and St. Vincent College.