Heather Sappenfield’s short story collection Lyrics for Rock Stars, winner of the V Press LC Compilation Book Prize, is out today – congratulations, Heather!

In Lyrics for Rock Stars, Heather Mateus Sappenfield has drawn a map of the Colorado mountains and written a legend that describes the inner workings of its people’s hearts.
—Camille T. Dungy

Stepping into the stories in Lyrics for Rock Stars is like stepping into lives you already know, people you’ve lived with, or if you don’t know them already, you’ll wish you did. Writing about the inhabitants of landscapes she knows by heart, Sappenfield makes her people come alive on the page and you’ll turn each of those pages hoping for them, pulling for them, realizing, slowly, that their lives are our own.

—Pete Fromm