A Kind of Dream is the culminating book in a trilogy Kelly Cherry began with My Life and Dr. Joyce Brothers and The Society of Friends. Each book stands alone, but together they take us on a Dantean journey from midlife to Paradise. Cherry’s prose is hallmarked by lyric grace, sly wit, the energy of her intelligence, and profound compassion for and understanding of her characters. Set in Madison, Wisconsin, A Kind of Dream reveals a surprisingly wide view of the world and the authority of someone who has mastered her art. It is a book to experience and to reflect upon.
Selected by the American Association of School Librarians and the Public Library Reviewers as a “Best Book for General Audiences.”
Kelly Cherry is the author of twenty-four books of fiction (long and short), poetry, memoir, essay, and criticism. She has also published ten chapbooks and translations of two classical dramas. Her most recent titles are Twelve Women in a Country Called America: Stories, Physics for Poets (chapbook), A Kelly Cherry Reader (stories, novel excerpts, memoir, essay, and eight poems), and A Kind of Dream(interlinked stories), selected by Library Journal as a Best Indie book. Her fiction has appeared in Best American Short Stories, Prize Stories: The O. Henry Awards, The Pushcart Prize, and New Stories from the South and has won three PEN/Syndicated Fiction awards. Her story collection The Society of Friends (which, she says, has nothing to do with the Society of Friends) received the Dictionary of Literary Biography Award for Short Fiction for the best collection published in 1999. For her poetry she received the inaugural Hanes Prize for a body of work. Other awards are listed on her Wikipedia page. Her new and selected poems, titled Hazard and Prospect, was a finalist for the Poets’ Award. Cherry says, “I write because I have ideas that can be realized only by writing. Luckily, I love to write. And I love to hear from those who read my work and respond to the heart of what I write.”