Wrench

After awarding the book a New American Fiction Prize, Larry Watson said that WRENCH "proves that Wayne Harrison knows what it takes to keep cars and stories running smoothly. He also understands the working of the human heart, and the result is a collection filled with authentic and compelling stories." David Vann, author of Goat Mountain and Aquarium, said that "Harrison has a gift for evoking working-class lives in all their disorientation, threat, and quietness. And like the later Carver, his focus is on generosity, on moments when lives intersect and expand. Tragedy here isn't meanness but can be the ache of wanting to help someone and having to watch them destroy themselves anyway. These stories are elegant and powerful and ultimately about our resilience.” About Harrison's debut novel, THE SPARK AND THE DRIVE, Richard Russo said, "There's nothing I enjoy more than entering a fictional world over which an author demonstrates complete mastery"; and the Washington Post said, "Whether or not you love cars, Harrison speaks that special dialect so fluently that anyone with a heart can hear it." WAYNE HARRISON's fiction has been featured on NPR’s All Things Considered, and his short stories appear in Best American Short Stories 2010, The Atlantic, Narrative Magazine, McSweeney’s, Ploughshares, The Sun, and Salon.com. He teaches at Oregon State University.