Showing results by narrator "Kelley Jo Burke" in All Categories

Thelma's marriage is unraveling as her oblivious husband Wally rediscovers his youthful obsession with Che Guevara. When Rosa, a young Cuban poet, joins his writing group, he unexpectedly books a trip to Cuba. Thelma decides to join him and discovers that he has inexplicably disappeared. As she searches for Wally, she converses with the ghost of her father, confronts her abandoned dreams, and relies on the help of odd strangers.

Raised by a pair of owls since he was a hatchling, Gus grows up believing he is the last Green Dragon. Then, a chance encounter with a girl named Ev uncovers a secret doorway between Gus’s world and hers.

Meet Sylvie—funny, sly, sensual, and flawed. She can’t always count on herself to make good choices. Like all of us, Sylvie must make decisions that have reverberations for years to come. Unlike the rest of us, Sylvie gets to live more than one life.

Archaeological illustrator Beatrix Forster accompanies her husband, retired archaeology professor William Forster, to excavate the cemetery at San Miguel in Excelsis, an isolated medieval sanctuary in the mountains of northern Spain. Bill's former student, now a priest in Navarre, has enticed them out of comfortable retirement with the rumor that the infamous medieval knight and founder of the sanctuary, Teodosio de Goñi, may be buried at the church.

A playwright possessed by her muses, an actress desperate to succeed, and a doctor haunted by a lost love. Three people cross time and space to meet through the playwright's bizarre creative process.

Forced intimacies, dead dogs, errant balloons, a troubled chef's encounter with ethereal Swedish lesbians, all form this remarkable short story collection, Bodies in Trouble, depicting characters coping with faltering relationships, simmering violence, and light-drenched visions. Stories of damaged daughters and abandoned sons, of near-crashes, lost loves, and late nights steeped in regret. Lurking within these tales is the glimmer of hope from a brave choice, a bold action, the recalibration of a dangerous path.

Kelley Jo Burke embarks on a wild journey to understand many things, including the part where her grandfather sort of murdered her grandmother. Returning to a house filled with her first memories of childhood, she begins to explore the complex origins of her own anxiety. Along the way, she reflects on alienation and immigration, mental health and generational trauma, and the nature of memory itself. A memoir filled with raw honesty, comedy, tragedy, and grace.

Award-winning author Ven Begamudré spins three stories in a masterful blend of myth and realism.