PREVIOUS PRAISE FOR SHARON DILWORTH

"The awesome terrain of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula provides the background for the best stories in this collection by the winner of the 1988 Iowa Short Fiction Award. In the title story, the descendants of Indians and Finns living in the hamlet of Goodheart near Lake Michigan, experience winter as 'made up of only two colors, the white of the snow and the black of the trees.' In their isolation, psychological as well as geographical, the demons they struggle with include old racial prejudices, alcoholism and an obsession with the unpredictable lake that leads to tragedy. The closed-in feeling in the midst of snow-covered expanse 'Ahead, Lake Superior is a black hole in the darkness' is also captured in 'Winter Mines,' where a temporarily displaced mine worker succumbs to depression and is unable to leave his house. Other tales of neurasthenic characters are set elsewhere. 'The Lady on the Plane' contains a striking characterization of a woman who returns from Ireland with a box of photographs that her father recently dead took of himself 'every day of his life'; in 'Independence Day' the pathos of a young mother’s widowhood is subtly conveyed. These are heartfelt stories, illuminations of lives shaped by place as well as time."

Publishers Weekly on The Long White

"Sharon Dilworth’s writing is animated and sympathetic, wry and aware. Her characters are vivid and unpredictable."

Robert Stone on The Long White

"Though Rubik’s Cubes are no longer a national obsession, those colorful puzzles may keep coming to mind as you’re reading Sharon Dilworth’s second short-story collection, Women Drinking Benedictine. Her fiction is just as intricate: whenever one person moves, another is dislodged, and the pattern of the narrative grows more elaborate with each turn. But while someone struggling with a Rubik’s Cube tries to twist everything back into alignment, Dilworth delights in doing the opposite. Characters initially arranged along familiar axes—husband and wife, mother and daughter, boyfriend and girlfriend—soon find themselves on unfamiliar ground."

Liam Callanan, The New York Times

"In this collection of 10 well-crafted but low-key stories, Dilworth sticks mostly to flat, cautious sentences and characters. In the first tale, “Keeping the Wolves at Bay,” Steve is caught between an awkward relationship with Max, his late father’s longtime companion, and his own disintegrating love affair. Steve hurries back from a tedious European holiday with Max to his fiancee, but she breaks off the engagement. His sexual affinity now resolved, he takes the next flight back to Paris, hoping to rejoin Max, but discovers that the older man is faithless. The story ends on a scene of frustration and futility, the characteristic atmosphere in which Dilworth’s characters move. In “This Month of Charities,” “Figures on the Shore” and “Three Fat Women of (Pittsburgh just visiting) Antibes,” the characters’ sexual frustration and idleness never lead to a cathartic act that would effectively engage the reader. The title story is compelling, however. Its plot, actually about the rivalry between two sisters, takes an awkward detour into absurdly unlikely murder attempts, but the narrator, Caroline, is one of Dilworth’s most sympathetic characters, especially in her tender, sincere friendship with Denny, the town’s alcoholic bartender."

Publishers Weekly on Women Drinking Benedictine

"Year of the Ginkgo confirms that Sharon Dilworth is a remarkably talented writer. She has a keen eye for detail, an effortless, understated style, and an instinct for revealing these uncomfortable dark truths simmering away below polite suburban surfaces."

Rodge Glass, Somerset Maugham Award Winner, 2009