The typical action of Plattner’s best stories
concerns the seedy world of
horse racing. The scene of that action is
naturally the race track, usually
a small track in a dying town, often a steel
town… This milieu is as natural
to Andrew Plattner as the Catholic Church and
its priests were to
J. F. Powers and the agrarian world of
Georgia to Flannery O’Connor…
We follow the velleities and vicissitudes of
[Plattner’s] beleaguered souls
with fascination and pleasure.
—George Core, from the Foreword
Plattner’s stories always amaze me with
delicacy, introspection, precision,
observation, and profound empathy.
Highly recommended.
Andrew
Plattner’s first short-story collection,
Winter Money, won the Flannery
O’Connor Award from the University of Georgia Press. His
coffee-table book,
a narrative about the
evolution of the Kentucky Derby titled A History of the
Run for the Roses, was a finalist for the
Castleton-Lyons Prize as the best book on horse
racing in 2009. A former turf
writer, he has published short fiction in a number of
literary journals such as
The Paris Review, Epoch, Shenandoah, Northwest Review,
and Sewanee Review. He lives in
Atlanta and is currently at work on new stories and a novel
manuscript.
