I Was a Revolutionary

Author(s):
Andrew Malan Milward
Book summary:

A richly textured, diverse collection of stories that illuminate the heartland and America itself, exploring questions of history, race, and identity. Grounded in place, spanning the Civil War to the present day, the stories in I Was a Revolutionary capture the roil of history through the eyes of an unforgettable cast of characters: the visionaries and dreamers, radical farmers and socialist journalists, quack doctors and protestors who haunt the past and present landscape of the state of Kansas.

Publication year:
2015
Publisher:
HarperCollins
Award(s):
Winner of the Friends of American Literature Award
Winner of the Kansas Book Award
Praise:
Quote:
“In this brilliant, inventive collection, Milward channels ghosts from his native Kansas into eight stories that could spring only from that fraught border of the Civil War.”
Credit:
New York Times Book Review
Quote:
“The rich, brutal history of Kansas ignites—and propels—the eight stories that make up Andrew Malan Milward’s accomplished second collection. By its conclusion, the reader is left considering many questions of history, identity, race, and how we retell these stories to others and ourselves.”
Credit:
Boston Globe
Quote:
“The eight stories in Milward’s collection don’t just use history as a jumping-off point, they also raise questions about the nature of recorded history. Each one feels as complete and complex as a novel. This collection is sharp, shrewd, and consistently thought provoking.”
Credit:
Publishers Weekly, starred review
Quote:
“He sets a standard for the story collection. This collection brims with accessible originality, unparalleled range and thought-provoking heartbreak. . . . Like E.L. Doctorow in ‘Ragtime,’ Milward fashions high art from historical events and figures.”
Credit:
Jackson Clarion-Ledger
Quote:
“Milward is a protégé of Marilynne Robinson and Tim O’Brien, and it shows in the way he takes well-worn history book anecdotes and transforms them into something human, raw, and immediate...I adored it—it’s one of my absolute favorites of the year.”
Credit:
Book Riot
Quote:
“The challenge of turning history into short stories is met by Milward, who mines his home state, Kansas, to put life into characters pulled from time’s landslide. . . . With his portrayal of conscience-ridden individuals navigating historical forces, Milward has achieved a landmark feat in fiction.”
Credit:
Asheville Citizen-Times
Quote:
“Throughout the book, Milward makes astute observations about politics, not only about the political climate of past eras but also of our own-a rarity in contemporary American fiction.”
Credit:
BookPage
Bio:
Photo:
Short bio:
Andrew Malan Milward was born in Lexington, Kentucky, and grew up in Lawrence, Kansas. A graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, he is the author of the story collections The Agriculture Hall of Fame, which was awarded the Juniper Prize for Fiction by the University of Massachusetts, and I Was a Revolutionary (HarperCollins, 2015), which was awarded the Friends of American Writers Literature Award. His fiction has been a finalist for the National Magazine Award and appeared in many places, including Zoetrope, American Short Fiction, VQR, The Southern Review, Guernica, as well as Best New American Voices. He has served as the McCreight Fiction Fellow at the University of Wisconsin, a Steinbeck Fellow at San Jose State University, and has received fellowships and awards from the Lannan Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Corporation of Yaddo.
A&S department affiliation:
Book URL:
HarperCollins