Proof of Me and Other Stories
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 stitches together the lives and adventures of each of its characters, in unexpected and peculiar ways, from one story to the next.
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"Erica Plouffe Lazure's stories are downright combustible: Proof of Me begins, quite literally, with a bang, and the intensity never wavers. Here is a writer who knows how to create characters that will haunt you long after you finish their woebegone tales, told in prose that glints and glimmers."
- NICK WHITE, author of Sweet & Low and How to Survive a Summer
"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
"Erica Plouffe Lazure is a master of the ways that allow great writers of fiction to transport us beyond the boundaries of our own lives and into the hearts and souls of others: She inhabits her characters profoundly and she sings from there in richly real voices. Proof of Me is proof of Lazure's literary genius. She is one of my favorite contemporary writers."
- ROBERT OLEN BUTLER, author of A Good Scene from a Strange Mountain
"Erica Plouffe Lazure's Proof of Me is a striking debut collection. 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. As for the characters, she has clearly been watching them all her life."
- SVEN BIRKERTS, author of Changing the Subject: Art and Attention in the Internet Age
"Proof of Me is such a beautifully textured book. Every sentence of Lazure's prose is stamped with authority and confidence, allowing the people, place, situations, and descriptions a rich and satisfying dimensionality."
- AIMEE BENDER, author of The Butterfly Lampshade
"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
