Kendall Klym

In addition to winning the Tartt First Fiction Award for his short story collection Step Lightly, (Livingston Press, 2019), Dr. Kendall Klym has won numerous awards for his short stories, which have been published in literary journals including Puerto del Sol, Hunger Mountain, and Fiction International. Klym is a three-time honorable mention winner of the Great American Fiction Contest and has won writing fellowships at the Fairhope Center for the Writing Arts, the Martha’s Vineyard Institute of Creative Writing, and Monson Arts. Two of his were nominated for a Pushcart Prize. A former professional ballet dancer, Klym holds a PhD in English with a concentration in Fiction Writing from the University of Wales, Aberystwyth. Most recently, he worked as a Visiting Assistant Professor of Creative Writing, Fiction, at Oklahoma State University.

The White Blouse

Outskirts of a mining town in northern Minnesota
August 1990
A ten-year-old girl named Ursula Dahl chases after a porcupine behind her mother’s trailer, her frizzy red hair sparkling in the late-summer light. The animal escapes through a wild raspberry patch, but the child refuses to give up.