Author Description

A New Collection from Wendell Mayo, author of 'In Lithuanian Wood', and 'The Cucumber King of Kédainia?. Wendell Mayo captures the fractured, mournful soul of modern Lithuania like no other writer. In his new book, Twice-Born World: Stories of Lithuania, he resurrects themes from In Lithuanian Wood and The Cucumber King of Kédainia: grief, loneliness, the impossibility of communication, the inexplicability of desire. In this volume, the themes are even more sharply delineated, with desire playing a more prominent role. Mayo's characters, like Lithuania herself, long to connect to a more youthful, hopeful version of the past. As always, Mayo masterfully combines elements of the absurd with deeply poetic language. Every story in Twice-Born World is a gem. I couldn't put this book down.-- Daiva Markelis, author of White Field, Black Sheep: A Lithuanian-American Life "In Twice-Born World, Wendell Mayo manages the seemingly impossible--to make his stories both steeped in post-Soviet Lithuanian sensibilities while also making them feel universal. These are characters in the midst of transition, characters who frequently tell stories that mesmerize, as if stories might make sense of this beguiling new world. The effect is startling as Mayo seamlessly slides through space and time and perspective, offering subtle commentary on the geopolitics of the 1980s, all of which feels particularly acute in 2018. A necessary companion to Mayo's In Lithuanian Wood, and a stunning collection by a master of the short story."--Brad Felver, author of The Dogs of Detroit Twice-Born World transports readers to a Baltic sphere of post-Soviet nostalgia and struggle, of boozy, clumsy, and erotic East-West encounters, of overheard park-bench conversations, and of knee-capped Lenin statues. In this clear-eyed yet hope-filled collection, Wendell Mayo welcomes us to his Lithuania: a topsy-turvy place of rainfall, blue skies, everyday poetry, sinking despair, and limitless po