Dancing in Their Dead Mother’s Dresses by Doug Ramspeck
Wolfson Press, August 2026 (Pre-order available)

In Dancing in Their Dead Mother’s Dresses, Doug Ramspeck’s luminous stories feel set as much in the characters’ minds as they are set in the Midwest. The muddy Midwestern rivers, train bridges, and winter lakes are sources of metaphors that help the characters make sense of unsettling realities: dead mothers, absent fathers, sick siblings, inscrutable friends, and intriguing neighbors. Dancing in Their Dead Mother’s Dresses calls to mind other language-rich story collections about the harsh realities of the urban and rural Midwest: The Luck of the Fall by fellow poet Jim Daniels and American Salvage by Bonnie Jo Campbell. Ramspeck shares an interest in traumatic events that destabilize our world. In our circumscribed realities, where mothers die but children live on, or brothers die and siblings must live on, sometimes all we have are the worlds of our imaginations.

“Rarely does a book hold me so firmly in its thrall, but Dancing in Their Dead Mother’s Dresses did from its first page to its last. The writing is masterful, and the characters are indelible. I loved these stories.” — Christine Sneed, author of The Virginity of Famous Men

Doug Ramspeck taught at The Ohio State University and now lives in Black Mountain, NC.