Winner of the Second Annual Rose Metal Press Short Short Chapbook Contest
With an introduction by contest judge Robert Shapard

At once sad and comical, always a little magical and strange, Forsyth’s young characters stumble towards maturity In The Land Of The Free. From the night a baby is born onto a cutting board in his mother’s kitchen, to the day a rhinoceros mysteriously escapes from the zoo, to the morning a young man wakes to find his mud-covered relatives back from the grave, Forsyth’s ten very short fictions aim to capture the elusive nature of our relationships in geographies wholly recognizable to all of us. Through hallways and houses in the suburbs, through graveyards and wooded nooks, through bars and high school parking lots, Forsyth brings his youngsters to the heart of the American moment, where the pursuit of freedom inevitably begins.

«Although the collection deals with dismay, disappointment, and death, it is a symposium on love […] In the Land of the Free makes me see how a short short story chapbook can be a great thing.»

Robert Shapard, editor of Sudden Fiction

Geoffrey Forsyth grew up in Lexington, Massachusetts. He is a graduate of The University of Iowa, The University of Vermont, and The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. His fiction has appeared in Other Voices, New Orleans Review, CutBank, RHINO, and several other literary magazines. His story “Coins” received an Illinois Arts Council Literary Award in 2008. He lives with his wife and two children in La Grange Park, Illinois.