Peering into the often unnoticed corners of life, Kevin Brockmeier has been consistently praised for the originality of his vision, the boundlessness of his imagination and the command of his craft. Once again, in this new collection of fiction, Brockmeier shows us a fantastical world that is intimately familiar but somehow distant and beautiful. From the touching title story, where a young, antisocial woman imagines her escape into the sky with an apparition only she can see, to the haunting story of a pastor tempted by something less than divine, Brockmeier moves effortlessly from the extraordinary to the everyday, while challenging us to see the world anew. Stunning, elegant, profound, and playful, The View from the Seventh Layer cements Kevin Brockmeier's place as one of the most creative and compassionate writers of his generation.

Peering into the often unnoticed corners of life, Kevin Brockmeier has been consistently praised for the originality of his vision, the boundlessness of his imagination and the command of his craft. Once again, in this new collection of fiction, Brockmeier shows us a fantastical world that is intimately familiar but somehow distant and beautiful. From the touching title story, where a young, antisocial woman imagines her escape into the sky with an apparition only she can see, to the haunting story of a pastor tempted by something less than divine, Brockmeier moves effortlessly from the extraordinary to the everyday, while challenging us to see the world anew. Stunning, elegant, profound, and playful, The View from the Seventh Layer cements Kevin Brockmeier's place as one of the most creative and compassionate writers of his generation.

Can you teach people to behave ethically? Thats the question being asked by business leaders and business school administrators across America as our country witnesses a wave of financial scandals. The Seven Layers of Integrity both answers that question and provides a model that serves as a learning tool and a decision-making mechanism. The authors believe people can be taught to behave ethically and they start by examining the reason people raise this question in the first place. Common thinking is that by the time people reach adulthood their value systems are already in place they are either ethical or not ethical. This is classic contemporary American thinking characterized by binary, mutually exclusive options; sound bite analysis; and an easy litmus test for the integrity of degree candidates, job applicants and business people. As with most ideas having these characteristics, it falls apart under even limited scrutiny. The solution to the business ethics problem lies in corporate culture, and the authors speak from their own familiarity, after years of business consulting, with the impact of corporate culture on human behavior. The number of ethical dilemmas available to the human race is without limits. Therefore, it is imperative that we teach people how to think about the decisions they may face. Management and employees need an understanding of how to analyze and resolve the day-to-day ethical questions encountered in a business setting. Standards of behavior do exist and The Seven Layers of Integrity provides a method for examining those standards. But in addition, business people should have a process to use when encountering new territory, a model that helps to clarify their thinking and a basic understanding of how to recognize and resolve ethical problems in business operations. This book presents that method.

Presents an alphabetical reference guide detailing the lives and works of authors associated with the English-language fiction of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.

From Kevin Brockmeier, one of this generation's most inventive young writers, comes a striking new novel about death, life, and the mysterious place in between. The City is inhabited by those who have departed Earth but are still remembered by the living. They will reside in this afterlife until they are completely forgotten. But the City is shrinking, and the residents clearing out. Some of the holdouts, like Luka Sims, who produces the City’s only newspaper, are wondering what exactly is going on. Others, like Coleman Kinzler, believe it is the beginning of the end. Meanwhile, Laura Byrd is trapped in an Antarctic research station, her supplies are running low, her radio finds only static, and the power is failing. With little choice, Laura sets out across the ice to look for help, but time is running out. Kevin Brockmeier alternates these two storylines to create a lyrical and haunting story about love, loss and the power of memory.

At age twelve, Kevin Brockmeier is ready to become a different person: not the boy he has always been—the one who cries too easily and laughs too easily, who lives in an otherland of sparkling daydreams and imaginary catastrophes—but someone else altogether. Over the course of one school year—seventh grade—he sets out in search of himself. Along the way, he happens into his first kiss at a church party, struggles to understand why his old friends tease him at the lunch table, becomes the talk of the entire school thanks to his Halloween costume, and booby-traps his lunch to deter a thief. With the same deep feeling and oddly dreamlike precision that are the hallmarks of his fiction, the acclaimed novelist now explores the dream of his own past and recovers the person he used to be.

Founded at the University of Georgia in 1947 and published there ever since, The Georgia Review has become one of America's most highly regarded journals of arts and letters. Never stuffy and never shallow, The Georgia Review seeks a broad audience of intellectually open and curious readers--and strives to give those readers rich content that invites and sustains repeated attention and consideration. Pulitzer Prize winners and never-before-published writers are equals during the journal's manuscript evaluation process, whose goal is to identify and print stories, poems, and essays that promise to be of lasting merit. The year 2012 marks the sixty-fifth anniversary of The Georgia Review, and Stories Wanting Only to Be Heard will acknowledge that milestone by presenting a selection of the remarkable short fiction published across the decades. The collection includes the work of well-known writers, many of whom were not yet so well known when first selected for publication by The Georgia Review, and also highlights compelling work from writers whose names may not be as familiar but whose stories are equally compelling and memorable. The stories collected here--each one vivid, distinctive, and worthwhile to read--stand as testament to the significance of The Georgia Review's decades of work to identify and promote writing of exceptional quality. Publication of this book was made possible, in part, by the President's Venture Fund through generous gifts of the University of Georgia Partners.