Praise for Edesia
“My favorite thing about the novella form is its ability to launch immediately, to build stress points and characters rapidly. That’s exactly the kind of crack Michael Hammerle’s Edesia has right off the bat. Broken home life, a mother lost to disease, a work-absent father, an exhausting job in a dying restaurant, a swallowed dream—it all comes at Hammerle’s protagonist, Tavi, like a nasty fast ball, but somehow none of it manages to knock him off the plate. In a matter of sentences, Hammerle has us all pulling for the guy to hang in there, to keep at it, to have just one thing break his way, to catch something just right and knock it out of the park. And in the end, it’s a real testament to Edesia’s mastery that Tavi hanging feet off the end of a pier, having a drink, and listening to the waves would feel so much like a home run to us.”
—Jack B. Bedell, author of Color All Maps New,
Poet Laureate, State of Louisiana, 2017-2019
“Edesia is the compelling story of, Tavi, a sensitive young man from the wrong side of the tracks, struggling to identify and pursue his passion which just might be the art of cooking. This novella is an appealing portrait of an artist, lingering on the threshold of his art, just about to take the momentous leap.”
–Stanley Patrick Stocker,
Winner of a 2021 PEN/Robert J. Dau Short Story Prize
Michael Hammerle is completing his MFA thesis at the University of Arkansas at Monticello where he has taught composition. He holds a BA in English from the University of Florida. He is the founder of Middle House Review. His fiction has been published in The Best Small Fictions 2017 selected by Amy Hempel. His prose and poetry has been published in Split Lip Magazine, New World Writing, Louisiana Literature, After the Pause, the Matador Review, and many more magazines. His writing has been a finalist at American Short Fiction, Hayden’s Ferry Review, and Prime Number Magazine. He lives and writes in Gainesville, FL.