I admit it: I love a great villain. A knowledgeable writer goes beyond the sometimes bombastic, destructive wake of a villain, provides opportunities for the character to change – or adamantly refuse to change – then peels away the character’s veil to reveal a small, vulnerable, pathetic person. In Kevin Wilson’s keen and meticulously written short story No Joke, This is Going to be Painful, a backyard party becomes both the scene of a spontaneous ice cube fight, and the last opportunity for the narrator to discover – or not – just how villainous she really is.

–Ana (Ana Alvarez is the Editorial Assistant at Algonquin)

New Stories from the South 2009

Kevin Wilson is the author of the collection, Tunneling to the Center of the Earth (Ecco/Harper Perennial, 2009).  His fiction has appeared in Ploughshares, Tin House, One Story, Cincinnati Review, and elsewhere, and has twice been included in the New Stories from the South: The Year’s Best anthology.  He has received fellowships from the MacDowell Colony, Yaddo, and the KHN Center for the Arts.  He lives in Sewanee, Tennessee.