People I Wanted to Be, by Gina Ochsner

While browsing a bookstore in Florida last week, I was startled to discover that my old college friend Gina Ochsner has just published a new collection of short stories, entitled People I Wanted to Be. Released by Houghton Mifflin (with the implication that a novel comes next), this new book is a followup to her 2002 collection, The Necessary Grace to Fall. “In this offbeat, affecting follow-up to her debut collection,” writes Publisher’s Weekly, “Ochsner assembles a host of oddballs whose touchingly resilient hopes and small leaps of faith fly in the face of almost certain disappointment. Ochsner knows that vindication and inspiration often come from unlikely places, and she can capture this contradiction gorgeously in a gesture.”

People I Wanted to Be includes a tale called “The Fractious South“, which I was similarly startled to discover in The New Yorker last summer.

An online interview with Gina, in regard to her new book, can be found here.