The Sky Is a Free Country

The first triennial collected volume of winners and top-five finalists of the Luminaire Awards for Best Prose and Best Poetry for the years 2014 through 2016. Features 13 gut-punching short stories and 15 heart-rending poems by various authors, each piece having won out over hundreds of others to be selected as the best work of its respective year through a blind judging process, conducted by Alternating Current Press and external judges. Walk with storytellers through tales of domestic violence, children disappearing on spaceships, a car-parts thief at the scene of an accident, a gravedigger pulling the plug on a childhood nightmare, attending Santa Claus school, telling your secrets to strangers, and a dangerous proposal for fertility. Explore Tennessee, chase bombmakers out of hostage situations, come of age, stand at the Alamo, walk down Birch Street, pick apples, and return to your roots in these stories and poems by some of the independent press' finest contemporary writers.