Survival Tips: Stories

by Miriam Gershow

Survival Tips: Stories follows characters through their friendships, their jobs, their marriages, and their grief as they stumble toward connection and meaning. A wife begins communicating to her husband only in rebus puzzles. A new teacher confronts her strongest foes, the parents of a disruptive student. A group of conference-goers join their guru in a jerry-rigged sweat lodge. A woman shows up to her blind date in a "Don't Leave Me" t-shirt. With wit and candor, these ten stories examine the ways we live, the mistakes we make, and the paths we take in hopes of delivering us to ourselves and each other.

“In ten stories you won’t forget, Gershow writes with a sharp eye for detail, impeccably wry wit, and unerring insight into the human heart. A stellar collection.” —Jacqueline Doyle, author of The Missing Girl

“Miriam Gershow has a knack for fictional characters so keenly human that you expect any one of them to show up at your front door. ” —Debra Gwartney, author of I Am a Stranger Here Myself and Live Through This

"In this poignant examination of human hypocrisy and devotion, Gershow writes with intelligence, humor, and empathy. I loved Survival Tips.” —Corrina Wycoff, author of Damascus House and O Street

Genres: Short Stories, Fiction

166 pages, Paperback

Published March 19, 2024

About the author

Miriam Gershow is the author of Closer (Regal House), Survival Tips: Stories (Propeller Books), and The Local News (Spiegel & Grau). Miriam’s stories appear in The Georgia Review, Gulf Coast and Black Warrior Review, among other journals. Her flash fiction appears in anthologies from Alan Squire Books, Alternating Currents, and Fractured Lit, as well as many journals, including Pithead Chapel, Had, and Variant Lit. Her creative nonfiction is featured in Salon and Craft Literary among other journals.

Miriam’s writing has been called “unusually credible and precise" and "deftly heartbreaking” by The New York Times. She is the recipient of a Fiction Fellowship from the Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing, an Oregon Literary Fellowship, an Independent Publisher Book Award, and a Pencraft Award. She is a two-time finalist for the Oregon Book Awards’ Ken Kesey Award for Fiction and has been awarded writing residencies at Playa, Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts, Hypatia-in-the-Woods, and Wildacres.

She received her MFA from the University of Oregon, and has since taught fiction writing at the University of Wisconsin as well as descriptive writing to gifted high school students through Johns Hopkins University. She has taught writing to first-graders, retirees, and everyone in between. She is the organizer of 100 Notable Small Press Books, a curated list of the year’s recommended titles across genres from independent publishers. Miriam lives with her family in Eugene OR, where she teaches writing at the University of Oregon.
(Photo Credit: Livia Fremouw)

Reviews

[Steven Christiansen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent collection. The interconnected theme of survival reminded me a bit of Tillie Olsen’s “I Stand Here Ironing”, which is one of my all-time favorite short stories.

[LLJ · Rating 5 out of 5]

So grateful for the opportunity to be an early reader for this collection. This was a rare time when I had become friendly with the author over the past few years, initially from a shared writing course, but had not read any of her published work. I was so blown away by the short stories in this book. "Survival Tips" is a collection of engaging, heartfelt, hilarious, and true-to-life stories delivered in varied formats (some hermit crab pieces and others in standard prose). They were thoughtful and so well-written; I found myself thinking about them at different moments in my day, well after I'd finished each one. The relatable theme of how difficult and confusing relationships can be and, more specifically, communication between and among people. The characters in this collection are varied ages, backgrounds, genders, and personalities. Even the most frustrating of them was strangely huggable and forgivable. I hesitate in adding direct quotes as this is still an uncorrected proof, but I'll be rereading and dog-earing MANY pages of a hard copy once it is released in March 2024. I can say, with full candor, that I enjoyed every single story in this collection but Carker, Congratulations, Baby, Don't Leave Me, and Pipelines are Pipes were standout favorites. The hermit crab pieces were stellar!! And Lines of Communication can also be found in an awesome anthology (out 11/14/2023) called "Already Gone: 40 Stories Of Running Away" (edited by @hannahgrieco) and reviewed in Goodreads. Blessed to love books and writers and this one is a getter and a KEEPER. LLJ

[Jacqueline Doyle · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm the creative nonfiction editor at CRAFT, where we published a stunning nonfiction microflash by Miriam Gershow, so I was thrilled to get an advance look at her story collection. Here's the long form of the blurb I wrote:
Miriam Gershow’s characters in Survival Tips range from wives and husbands to teenage girls to women on blind dates to women clinging to friendships past their expiration date. They struggle with communication. An insecure teacher attempts to talk to parents about a boy who refuses to speak in class. A lonely relay operator develops a crush on a deaf caller whose phone conversations he facilitates. A drunken woman at an old friend’s baby shower “needs to make her unhappiness communicable,” no matter whom she alienates. A woman argues secretly with her husband while making “daytime sangria” for mothers she barely knows at her toddler’s birthday party. An unhappy wife tries to communicate with her spouse through rebuses because “the marital therapist said they need to establish new lines of communication.” Relationships fall apart. Relationships fail to start. Relationships survive. In ten stories you won’t forget, Gershow writes with a sharp eye for detail, impeccably wry wit, and unerring insight into the human heart. A stellar collection.
Jacqueline Doyle, author of The Missing Girl

[Fredrick Soukup · Rating 5 out of 5]

I quite enjoyed this collection. The stories were playful yet delightfully astute and psychologically rich. Rarely are the wounded so entertaining; rarely is the exploration of their interiors so invigorating for the reader. When employing, as Gershow does, such humor, edge, and wisdom, no topic is unbroachable, no depiction marred with the dual stains of poignancy and in-your-face symbolism prevalent in fiction today. I particularly enjoyed how Gershow manages in several stories—like “Carker,” All That Apply,” “Congratulations, Baby,” and “Don’t Leave Me”—to capture the various emotional transitions of her characters, seemingly leading them to the brink of life-altering realizations.

Survival Tips runs the gamut. Marriage, divorce, evolution, devolution, tweener mischief and a bunch of lost souls risking their lives in a sweat lodge for their spiritual leader. A wonderful collection.

[Mary · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved the friends and friendenemies, the mates and mateenemies in Survival Tips. Miriam Gershow is one of my writing comrades-- I admire so much about her books-- read her novel The Local News if you haven't already and keep your eyes peeled for her forthcoming novel Closer. My loud shout outs for the stories collected in Survival Tips: the depth of the characters! the ingenuity of their situations! the way plots resolve! The only way out-- to survive-- is through, writes Gershow, no matter the sweat, the tears, the dirty hands, the unanswered prayers, the broken hearts.

[Anne Gudger · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this book! I gulped it. Miriam Gershow's Survival tips: Stories, sings with beauty and depth. Gershow invents characters who let us see under the hood of humanity. We feel the complexities of being human: the awkwardness, the not smooth, the doubt. We meet her characters on the page and recognize them from our lives. In Gershow's capable hands, the stories take us to the edge at times, yet there's a safety net. These stories are so beautifully, artfully written, at times I'd forget it's fiction. It's a stunning collection that I'll go back to and back to.

[Stephanie Edwards · Rating 5 out of 5]

Brilliant. Miriam is a master of characters who are textured and exist beyond any and all binaries. Flawed in the most real of ways, sometimes surprising and sometimes not (which is also surprising in the moment), they are all navigating their circumstances with authentic awkwardness. Gershows details are delicious and the collection well organized leaving one with the perfect endnote of flavors. A wonderful read.

[Jill Sager · Rating 5 out of 5]

Just finished Survival Tips and it was worth the ride! Ms. Gershow weaves tale after tale with characters that are relatable with their troubles, their thoughts, the way they view themselves and their lives - I had to keep turning the page. I was riveted, not only because of her talent as a writer, but because she doesn't shy away from life's realistic messiness yet the stories never felt maudlin. Her work reminded me of J.D. Salinger's short stories. High praise.

[Sylvia · Rating 4 out of 5]

I loved Gershows novel The Local News. I don’t understand why it wasn’t praised more. So I was very excited to get my hands on her recent book of short stories. I’m not a lover of short stories unless they are connected in some way as I find them uneven to read. That was true of this collection but several of them were worth the price of admission. 3.5

[Debby Author · Rating 5 out of 5]

These short stories sparkle with wit, humor and incisiveness. Edgy and flawed, perhaps even "unlikable" by some standards, protagonists inhabited these stories and I adored them all. I wanted even more of each of them at the bittersweet ending of each tale.

[Reader · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love this collection. Gershow’s short fiction is heart-warming and heart-breaking, a blast to read, and evidence of her considerable chops. “Carker” is one of the best short stories I have read, ever. Looking forward to more from her.

[Skye · Rating 3 out of 5]

Just ok- I connected to a few of the stories.
The digital book format was a bit clunky and had more than a few typos/spacing errors.