Member Since: March 05, 2012

R.P. Burnham


Biography

R.P. Burnham edits The Long Story literary magazine and is a writer. He has published fiction and essays in many literary magazines. He has published five novels with The Wessex Collective—On a Darkling Plain, Envious Shadows, The Many Change and Pass, A Robin Redbreast in a Cage, and The Two Paths. Most of his fiction is set in Maine, where he was born and raised and has deep root; thematically his fiction explores the boundaries of the self and addresses the question of what our duties and responsibilities are to others. The Least Shadow of Public Thought, a book of his essays that introduce each issue of The Long Story, was published in 1996 by Juniper Press as part of its Voyages Series. He was educated at the University of Southern Maine (undergraduate) and The University of Wisconsin–Madison (graduate). He is married to Kathleen A. FitzPatrick, an associate professor of biology at Merrimack College in North Andover.

Where to find R.P. Burnham online

Website: http://www.longstorylitmag.com

Where to buy in print

http://www.thewessexcollective.com

Books

Jonathan Willing's Travels to Pangea    by R.P. Burnham
Price: Free! 80430 words. Published by The Wessex Collective  on July 31, 2012. Fiction.
a satiric fable about a future where the 1% have achieved total control of society and the world. It follows a young alien who spends a year in this capitalist heaven.
The Two Paths    by R.P. Burnham
Price: $3.99 USD. 108300 words. Published by The Wessex Collective  on March 20, 2012. Fiction.
The Two Paths begins at a lakeside cottage where a group of graduating seniors are having a celebratory end-of-school party. One of them is Robbie Elder, campus football hero, who later in the night violates in an ambiguous rape Cilla Whitten, a plain and socially awkward junior lured there by the promise of excitement and popularity. The rest of the novel follows these two into young adulthood.
A Robin Redbreast in a Cage    by R.P. Burnham
Price: $3.99 USD. 107640 words. Published by The Wessex Collective  on March 19, 2012. Fiction.
A Robin Redbreast in a Cage is a novel about a teenaged girl taken from her alcoholic and promiscuous mother and sent to live with her uncle, a tyrannical fundamentalist minister. The only non-fundamentalist she befriends in high school is Jeremy Lawrence, a boy whose father was killed in a car accident; years later they serendipitously meet again.
On a Darkling Plain    by R.P. Burnham
You set the price! 116780 words. Published by The Wessex Collective  on March 16, 2012. Fiction.
Samuel Jellerson, 56 and forced into early retirement, is walking in the woods behind the family farm in Maine one fall day when he witnesses a priest molesting a boy. From this one event all the action in the novel follows and draws a wide cross section of the town into a theme that explores the nature of evil and its antidote empathy, the force that creates community, and fellow-feeling.
The Many Change and Pass    by R.P. Burnham
Price: Free! 138830 words. Published by The Wessex Collective  on March 15, 2012. Fiction.
The novel begins with the mercury poisoning of a small, impoverished boy and follows Chris Andrews, a ecological activist, Myron Seavey, a progressive librarian, and a dozen other characters, including the women Chris lives with in a house in Portland and the brother of the poisoned boy, Malcolm Kimball, who drops out of school, as they all deal with the implications of this poisoning.
Envious Shadows    by R.P. Burnham
Price: Free! 136340 words. Published by The Wessex Collective  on March 4, 2012. Fiction.
This is a novel about a black and white relationship in a small Maine town that explores the many forms of prejudice, particularly that of a racist Nazi group that hounds the couple and causes tragedy, but also many other external ways--class, religion, sexual orientation, even appearance and personality-- that people use to unfairly judge others.

R.P. Burnham’s tag cloud

adultery    alcoholic mother    american jews    american nazis    amish rumschpringen    ayn rand    billionaires    box store workers    boy loses father    child prodigy    class tensions    cocaine addiction    compassion    congregationalist minister    daycare center    economists    empathy    fable    family    fatherson relationship    forgiveness and healing    freedom fighters    fundamentalism    green activist    guilt    heroes    highschool football hero    interracial relationship    jealousy    lesbians    literary fiction    love vs duty    maine    minamata disease    nurses    peer pressure    polluter    predatory females    priestly abuse of boys    rightwing minister    satire    sexism    single mother    single mothers    social roles    social worker    softball    soup kitchen    swamp yankee    the 1 percent    univ of s maine    uw madison    wounded iraqi veteran    young love