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Men Beware Women

New from Miami University Press

 

Men Beware Women

By Gwen Thompson

Winner of the 2012 Miami University Press Novella Contest

ISBN 978-1-881163-51-0 Paperback; 184 pages

$15.00

 

Malcolm has read so many English novels that Oxford feels as familiar as it does foreign when he arrives from New York to study Shakespeare in the intervals between crew practice. But all it takes is one drama student for life to shake loose his grasp of literature. Emma isn't the prettiest girl he's ever slept with, or the most well-read, but her mind most matches his. When she lands a part in a play Off-Off-Broadway and decamps to New York leaving no forwarding address, the irony that in a book would be artistic rankles in real life. Cast adrift, Malcolm miscalculates and breaks two ribs rowing. His Shakespeare tutor warns him not to let love get in the way of literature—or at least not till they do the tragedies—but as soon as term ends, Malcolm hops a plane to New York. Will he be able to steer his own course to the middle way his tutor's always touting? Or do happy endings only exist in books?

Launch Party

 

 

 

Interview


Gwen Thompson Talks Novellas, Crew and Oxford


Events

NOV 23,
2013

Men Beware Women
Pop-Up Lit Crawl
Part flash mob, part scavenger hunt, part pub crawl--fun for all!
Place: Manhattan locations to be disclosed

To join in, visit: facebook by noon on Friday

SEP
2013

Westfield College Women's Club Intentional Readers discussion
Place: Westfield, NJ
Date: September 2013

Reviews


“Gwen Thompson has written a witty and highly intelligent novella starring a winning and sympa­thetic hero. What a pleasure to read a book designed for lovers of literature and the stage.”
— Christopher Castellani, author of All This Talk of Love

 

“Men Beware Women is a charming story of one young man’s wide-ranging education abroad.  It is also a wise, fast-paced novella that you will not be able to put down. When you do finish it, you’ll immediately be looking to pick up more work from the extremely talented Gwen Thompson.”
— Edward Schwarzschild, author of The Family Diamond

 

“Gwen Thompson portrays Oxford dons, Upper East Side executives, and working-class English girls with the same breezy mastery, while reveling in the minutiae of Elizabethan drama, pub crawling, competitive rowing, and getting your heart broken. A thoroughly charming performance from a very talented young writer.”
— Ralph Lombreglia, author of Men Under Water and Make Me Work

 

Buy the Book

 

The Author

 

Gwen Thompson was the kid who always ran out of paper for writing assignments in elementary school, when she wasn't getting busted by her teachers for reading too much. This prompted her to earn a Master's degree in Creative Writing from Boston University, winning the Florence Engel Randall Short Story Award and the Lawrence H. Blackmon Book Collecting Prize. She graduated from Bowdoin College, where she won the Nathaniel Hawthorne Short Story Prize, and spent her junior year at Oxford, learning to put milk in her tea, drink warm beer, and watch as much live Shakespeare as humanly possible. She lives in Brooklyn.