A Bed of Nails, Ron Tanner's first collection of stories, is a tour de force of short fiction that showcases a wide range of approaches--from flash fiction to speculative fiction--with piercing and touching explorations of character: "fabulously imaginative, experimental, witty, often breathtaking."

Pub dates: January 2003, 2006
Double prize winner: G.S. Sharat Chandra Prize, and
Towson Prize for Literature
Other awards in this collection include a Pushcart Prize, "notable" mention in Best American Short Stories, and the Literary Review's Charles Angoff Award.
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Ron Tanner's first collection of stories, A Bed of Nails, was the winner of the first annual G. S. Sharat Chandra Prize for Short Fiction, sponsored by BkMk Press.

The prize's judge was Janet Burroway, author of of eight novels (including a National Book Award finalist), three nonfiction books (including Writing Fiction, the most widely used fiction-writing text in the U.S.), a book of poetry, two books for children, and a number of produced plays. In selecting Ron Tanner's manuscript, she wrote:

“My choice for the first G. S. Sharat Chandra Prize is A Bed of Nails. The author is fabulously imaginative, experimental, witty, often breathtaking. The series of ‘Revolutionary Militia’ stories that thread the collection, and which are not science fiction so much as eco-fiction, have an eerie convincingness. Both male and female voices are handled beautifully, although the prose is what we've come to call ‘muscular.’ At first I felt that this was actually two collections, one concerned with life as we know it and one as we fear it will be-but came to believe that the worlds are perfectly married through their askew inventiveness and their witty contemporary language. It's very assured and audacious work.“

A Bed of Nails went on to win the Towson Prize for Literature for the best book by a Maryland author. Administered annually by Towson University, in Towson, Maryland, the prize is granted on the basis of literary and aesthetic excellence as determined by a panel of distinguished judges appointed by the university. The first award, made in the fall of 1980, went to novelist Anne Tyler.

Other accolades for A Bed of Nails:

“The stories in Ron Tanner's wonderfully ingenious and diverse collection create a whole new image of the complex interrelationships between art and life. A Bed of Nails is a rigorous pleasure."
-- Madison Smartt Bell

"Ron Tanner has a talent for creating stories that provoke his characters and readers to come to terms with risks-physical, emotional, and political. A compelling collection."
--Susan Hubbard

"Assignment: Combine the tender realism and precise social observation of an Alice Adams with the wild machinations of a Donald Barthelme. Logically impossible, you say? Not for Ron Tanner, as his startling debut collection-with its clever premises, moving material and wildly imaginative details-proves."
--Debra Spark

"In these thirteen diverse and nimble stories Ron Tanner juxtaposes raging tales of war with intense daily dramas where the dangers are more to the spirit than the body. The four war stories--which could be set in many countries--present a gruelling, tender, unsentimental portrait of a family fragmented by struggle against dictatorship. In his wry, unblinking style, Tanner also writes about a sales woman looking for love in a shopping mall; a Hollywood monster actor searching for his identity; a drummer who chooses between human love and artistic devotion. Throughout the book, one trusts the intelligence, research and genuine compassion of the author. Tanner's approach is always enlighteningly unpredictable as he explores themes of longing, loss and survival. The Day His Wife's Face Froze is a crucial reminder about the line between the folly of anticipation and the necessity of hope."
--Valerie Miner

BkMk Press was founded in 1971 and has published nearly 130 titles to date, mostly in poetry and short fiction, with some titles in creative nonfiction, drama, and regional history. BkMk’s authors come from all over the United States (and from abroad).

The press is affiliated with New Letters magazine at the University of Missouri-Kansas City. The press is a member of the Council for Literary Magazines and Presses, and its titles are reviewed in publications throughout the country. Since 1999, BkMk has sponsored the annual John Ciardi Prize for the best book-length manuscript of poetry. In 2003 the press initiated the G.S. Sharat Chandra Award, an annual competition for the best book-length manuscript of short stories.

The press currently publishes five or six books a year and receives annual support from the Missouri Arts Council, the National Endowment for the Arts, and other sources.

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