In conversation with Melissa Cistaro

In Show Her a Flower, A Bird, A Shadow, Peg Alford Pursell creates vivid characters and piercing situations. Nothing is too small for her imagination—a wren on a branch, a hole in a sock, ginger tea—and nothing too dangerous—a girl hit by a stone, a mother and daughter struggling. In a matter of a few words, a few lines, Pursell transports us into vivid situations of loss and longing.

Peg Alford Pursell has been published in Permafrost, The Cortland Review, the Journal of Compressed Arts, and Vestal Review, among many others. She’s the recipient of numerous awards and honors, including the SC State Fiction Award, The South Carolina Academy of Authors Award, and the Flannery O’Connor Award for Fiction shortlist. She directs Why There Are Words, a national neighborhood of reading series, and WTAW Press, an independent publisher of exceptional literary books.