A! Magazine for the Arts

Michael Cody

Michael Cody

ETSU English professor publishes short story collection

December 27, 2021

There’s a story about a college professor who gets snowed in at home with his wife – who was planning to leave him that same day. Then there’s the minister trekking up a mountain who picks up a hitchhiker, who ultimately pulls a knife on the preacher. Visions of death persistently visit a gravedigger, and a conservative local business owner has the revelation that his son, a well-known musician, is gay, HIV-positive and has returned home but only to die.

These stories and more are part of “A Twilight Reel: Stories,” written by East Tennessee State University’s Dr. Michael Amos Cody, a professor and assistant chair for Graduate Studies in the Department of Literature and Language.

All of the stories in Cody’s book, happen in and around the fictional town of Runion, North Carolina.

The 12 interrelated tales, each set in its own month over the course of the year 1999, offer a picture of a community in an age of fast change.

Published by Pisgah Press, Cody’s work has already garnered rave reviews.

A specialist in American literature from its beginnings to the middle of the 19th century, Cody has authored both scholarly texts and a novel, “Gabriel’s Songbook,” in 2017.

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