Press Americana
218 pages
August 7, 2024
In Exit, Pursued by a Bear, art—particularly the visual arts—is a unifying and simultaneously expansive theme, from “Intention’s” grieving portraitist to the artists and female caregivers who wander the paths of “Solstice in the Jardin du Luxembourg.” Winner of Prize Americana, these stories from Jacqueline Kolosov shore up against the inevitability of loss, illness, death, addiction, ruptures in intimacy—a testament to “the art that doth mend nature” from The Winter’s Tale. If the bear of that late Shakespearean romance both upends and galvanizes the plot, then the horses, dogs, and ravens of this story collection act as companions, teachers, and even spirit guides to the human beings, each and every one bruised and damaged—but also shining.
Born in Chicago, Jacqueline Kolosov spent the first thirty years of life in and around big northern cities, only to find herself in arid, windswept West Texas at the start of the twenty-first century. Thanks to her daughter, she soon fell in love with horses and the open expanse of a country defined by sky. A member of the creative writing faculty at Texas Tech University, she has published three collections of poetry including the ekphrastically-driven Modigliani’s Muse. A fourth, Talons, Wings, is forthcoming from Salmon in 2025. Also an essayist and a practitioner of hybrid forms, her collection of lyric essays Motherhood, and the Places Between was selected by W. Ralph Eubanks for Stillhouse Press’s annual prize. She has published several YA/crossover novels including two set in Elizabethan England: The Red Queen’s Daughter and A Sweet Disorder (Hyperion/Disney). Jacqueline co-edited three anthologies of contemporary writing including Family Resemblance: An Anthology and Investigation of Eight Hybrid Literary Genres, 2015 Winner of Foreword’s IndieFab Award for Nonfiction. She has been awarded a Literary Fellowship from the National Endowment of the Arts along with residencies at the Banff Centre and an artist’s house in Amagansett. Active in the field of Art in Community Health, she is an ad hoc cook, lifelong yogi, and passionate horsewoman. She can usually be found out in the elements with horses and her dog.