Official website for writer Gabriel Welsch.
News and Updates
Great review in
Moon City Review!
Groundscratchers in Pittsburgh Quarterly
Excerpts: “Gabriel Welsch’s revelatory short story collection . . . The bonus for readers comes in his realistic portrayals and observations of missed opportunities laced with regret. His work, some of it previously published in leading journals such as Ploughshares and Harvard Review, displays a maturity to the writing, creating sympathetic characters who often do the wrong thing, necessary for building the tension needed . . . The observance of well-rendered details is a welcome feature throughout . . . The star of this collection is the suburban drama, “Nguyen Van Thieu is Dead at 78” . . . luminous because of the narrator’s reflectiveness . . . The finale, “Last Words,” reads like a fusion of Clue and Rashomon . . . all of the complicated mess and glories to be found in Groundscratchers.”
AWP Philadelphia,
March 2022!
So, AWP2022 in Philly was a blast! Enjoyed meeting new friends at the Tolsun Books table (Caitlyn Hunter, Risa Pappas, Shawnee Orion, David Pischke, Heather Lang Caesura) and catching up with old friends like Aimee Nezhukumatathil and Mike Czyznijewski. If only I’d taken more pics, but there were a lot of books to look through . . .
Virtual Reading from Groundscratchers on Monday, February 21, with Hannah Kennedy!
Groundscratchers a Small Press Distribution Best Seller for October/November 2021!
Thanks to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette for including Groundscratchers in a book roundup this week!
Groundscratchers available at Duquesne University Bookstore.
Nice List to Be On!
Thanks to Small Press Distribution for including Groundscratchers on their SPD Recommends list for November!
Let’s Terrify Altoona
Upcoming Events
October 9, 2021: Official launch, Juniata Brewing Company, Huntingdon, PA
October 16, 2021: Local Author Book-signing Event, Berry Vine Gifts, Wexford, PA
October 19, 2021: OFFICIAL PUBLICATION DAY!
October 24, 2021: Tolsun Books Read-a-thon Fundraiser, Zoom
October 29, 2021: ArtsAltoona Scary Stories, with Dave Bonta and Camille-Yvette Welsch, ArtsAltoona Center, Altoona, PA
November 24, 2021: Huntingdon Rotary Club, Huntingdon, PA (private)
February 2022: Duquesne University, Pittsburgh, PA
March 11-13, 2022: Writer’s Conference of Northern Appalachia, Pittsburgh, PA
March 23-26, 2022: AWP Conference, Philadelphia, PA
Q&A with Littsburgh, the Steel City’s Guide to Everything Literary in the Area
Thank you to Littsburgh for posting a Q&A with me about the book! Looking to announce events in the city soon. In the meantime, official launch for the book is on October 9 at Juniata brewing Company, Huntingdon, PA. Watch for dates soon for an Altoona event.
Pre-order sales still available through October 19!
Groundscratchers Official Launch Scheduled for Saturday, October 9, at Juniata Brewing Company in Huntingdon, PA. Event starts at 1:30 pm.
GROUNDSCRATCHERS
Stories by Gabriel Welsch
AVAILABLE FOR PRE-ORDER NOW!
Elderly homeless twins appear to drift into the woods with a girl in tow. A physicist experiencing hallucinations sees an atom for the first time. A Ukrainian art thief takes an art historian as a lover. A conflict resolution specialist loses his cool at his daughter’s soccer game. A man discovers that his anonymous neighbor whose inattentiveness nearly killed his daughter was once the corrupt ally of the U.S. government. A head of grounds engages in botanical warfare with a trendy garden designer and a daughter contends with her irascible father’s pursuit to control beauty.
The characters in Groundscratchers are thinkers, over-thinkers, experts and worriers, confronting chaos borne of their obsessions—or aggravated by them.
Misunderstandings, secrets, vices, and calamitous betrayals haunt the characters and the stories here, through the collection’s last pages, where the very reliability of story itself is challenged by an exhausted, revelatory voice resigning to truth.
Groundscratching 