Vent - Tapa blanda

The pressure is building, and an outlet must be found. VENT is a collection of stories set against one of the most pivotal backdrops in our lives: high school graduation. The characters in this assemblage of short fiction are as varied as the young men and women whose footsteps echo down the corridors of America's schools. Yet there is unity, too. Unity of place. Unity of angst. Unity of hope. VENT captures the turbulent final year of high school with genuine warmth and humor as the protagonists search for excitement, acceptance, and above all else, healthy release. Pressure can be deadly. And if they don't want to explode, each must learn to vent.

Raised under the watchful gaze of the Big Horn Mountains, Gina Marie Bernard currently braves the harsh winters of Bemidji, Minnesota, where her dreams turn inevitably to log homes with roaring fireplaces. When not teaching English at Bemidji High School, she slips into her tattooed alter ego, wicked vixen, a blocker for the Babe City Rollers roller derby team. She is the crazy-proud parent of two daughters, Maddie Elizabeth and Parker Diana. Her work has appeared in Red Weather, Minnesota Monthly, Lake Country Journal, Gray's Sporting Journal, Flashquake, Wisconsin Review, Prism Quarterly, Defenestration, Duke University's Voices Magazine, The First Line, and Front Street Review. She has work forthcoming in Skin on Skin: Art of the Lesbian, and in Collective Fallout. She won Minnesota Monthly's 17th-annual Tamarack Award for short fiction in 2002. Her young adult novel, Alpha Summer, is available through Loonfeather Press (www.loonfeatherpress.com).