PROOF OF ME AND OTHER STORIES • by Erica Plouffe Lazure • ISBN 9781941561270 • $17.00 • March 24, 2022 • Paperback • 252pp
“Erica Plouffe Lazure’s stories are downright combustible: Proof of Me begins, quite literally, with a bang, and the intensity never wavers.”
— NICK WHITE, author of Sweet & Low and How to Survive a Summer
“Every sentence of Lazure’s prose is stamped with authority and confidence.”
— AIMEE BENDER, author of The Butterfly Lampshade
“Put your ear to the page and you will hear trace vibrations of O’Connor, Welty, Hannah and others, but the prose is all her own. Lazure’s sentences are richly textured, sensory, and alive with dark comedy and pitiless observation.”
— SVEN BIRKERTS, author of Changing the Subject: Art and Attention in the Internet Age
All things are delicately interconnected in these stories set in a small town in eastern North Carolina. From the rambunctious antics of an erstwhile Shad Queen to the guilt-throttled grief of a secret affair gone wrong, Proof of Me and Other Stories stitches together the lives and adventures of each of its characters, in unexpected and peculiar ways, from one story to the next.
Erica Plouffe Lazure’s prize-winning story collection Proof of Me and Other Stories will launch on March 24, 2022, at a reading event to be held at the Philadelphia Center for Architecture and Design (1218 Arch St, Philadelphia, PA 19107) as part of the Associated Writing Program’s 2022 Conference and Bookfair.
Ms. Lazure will be accompanied by several other writers at the event, including New York Times bestselling author Kristen Arnett, Yale Younger Poets Prize recipient and Whiting Writers’ Award winner Eduardo C. Corral, fellow New American Fiction Prize winners Amy Neswald and Rachel Swearingen, and others.
PROOF OF ME is available for sale at Bookshop.org. Every purchase at Bookshop.org financially supports independent bookstores.
Publicity Contact: Julia Borcherts | Kaye Publicity | julia@kayepublicity.com | 773.878.0722
MORE PRAISE FOR ERICA PLOUFFE LAZURE
“At one point in Erica Plouffe Lazure’s beautiful and masterful collection, Proof of Me and Other Stories, a character says: ‘you need distance to love something fully.’ These powerful, moving stories are about just that, finding the right distance: within a family, within a class or gender, within one’s self. The compelling details and knowledge on the page—rich depictions of the natural world and all creatures inhabiting—speak to the greater truths about humans. How they live and yes, finally, how they love. Lovely work by a wonderfully gifted writer.”
— JILL McCORKLE, author of Hieroglyphics
“If you can imagine Flannery O’Connor watching Wheel of Fortune or hearing a bad version of ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ at karaoke night, that might give you some idea of Erica Plouffe Lazure’s Proof of Me. In these darkly comic linked stories, the reader encounters a meticulous eye for detail, a keen ear for American voices, and an astringent sympathy for men who mow their lawns ‘bare-chested, pot-belly proud’ and women who know ‘there’s always problems with the mens, long as there been mens.’”
— DAVID GATES, author of A Hand Reached Down to Guide Me
