Rob Magnuson Smith will read from and sign his award-winning debut novel!

"Smith's well-wrought prose beautifully captures the tone of an English village and the awakening of a man whose livelihood depends on death but whose fear keeps him from living.... [An] impressive debut." --Publishers Weekly

Rob Magnuson Smith was raised in England and Oregon and studied philosophy at Pitzer College in Claremont, California.  Currently the 2009-2010 David Higham Scholar at the University of East Anglia Creative Writing Program in Norwich, England, his work has appeared widely in literary magazines such as Inkwell Magazine, The Greensboro Review, Fiction International, Notes from the Underground (UK), and The Reader (UK).  His debut novel The Gravedigger, winner of the Pirate's Alley Faulkner-Wisdom Competition, is forthcoming from University of New Orleans Press.

The Gravedigger (Paperback)

By Rob Smith

$16.95

ISBN-13: 9781608010103
Availability: On Our Shelves Now
Published: Univ of New Orleans Press, 10/2010

The gravedigger Henry Bale lives with his ailing dog in the village of Chalk, England. Painfully shy, he is resigned to growing old alone. Then Caroline Ford, an impulsive schoolteacher from Brighton, arrives in Chalk. Caroline awakens Henry to life, and to a fear of death. Their relationship becomes a startling investigation of love, faith, and the search for meaning.

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