Vanished, winner of the 2021 Prairie Schooner Raz-Shumaker Book Prize from the University of Nebraska Press.
“Lin-Greenberg’s flawless and insightful prose gives an acute sense of the characters’ perspectives as they change. This accomplished work is full of surprises.” —Publisher’s Weekly (starred review)
Winner of the Raz/Shumaker Prairie Schooner Book Prize in Fiction, Vanished tells the stories of women and girls in upstate New York who are often overlooked or unseen by the people around them. The characters range from an aging art professor whose students are uninterested in learning what she has to teach, to a young girl who becomes the victim of a cruel prank in a swimming pool, to a television producer who regrets allowing her coworkers into her mother’s bird-filled house to film a show about animal hoarding because it will reveal too much about her family and past.
Humorous and empathetic, the collection exposes the adversity in each character’s life; each deals with something or someone who has vanished—a person close to her, a friendship, a relationship—as she seeks to make sense of the world around her in the wake of that loss.
Faulty Predictions, winner of the 2013 Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction from the University of Georgia Press. Gold winner in the Short Story Category of the 2014 INDIE Book of the Year Awards.
“The 10 luminous stories in Lin-Greenberg’s masterful collection are united by her examination of the various and devious ways people try to put things into perspective … A winner of the coveted Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction, Lin-Greenberg deservedly joins such past recipients as Ha Jin, Kellie Wells, and Antonya Nelson as she offers a piquant look at life’s bittersweet moments.” —Booklist
In Faulty Predictions, young characters try to find their way in the world and older characters confront regrets. In "Editorial Decisions," members of the editorial board of a high school literary magazine are witnesses to an unspeakable act of violence. Two grandmothers, both immigrants from China, argue over the value of their treasures at a filming of Antiques Roadshow in "Prized Possessions." A city bus driver adopts a pig that has been brought onto the bus by rowdy college students in "Designated Driver." Although the characters are often faced with obstacles and challenges, the stories also capture moments of optimism and hope.