Washington Writers' Publishing House

Washington Writers’ Publishing House is the longest, continuously-operating cooperative nonprofit literary small press in the United States

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Kathleen Wheaton

Kathleen Wheaton lived in Bethesda, Maryland for twenty-five years working as a journalist and as a Spanish and Portuguese interpreter. Her collection, Aliens and Other Stories, received the 2013 WWPH Fiction Prize; she was president of the press for eight years. She is a 2024-2026 Stegner Fellow at Stanford University.

2013 WWPH Fiction Prize

WWPH Publications by Kathleen Wheaton

Testimonials

  • Kathleen Wheaton’s characters are exiles: from their nations, their native families, their objects of desire. These ruined specimens, as one character calls them, are almost always rescued — if not by circumstance, then by Wheaton’s compassionate, penetrating prose. These cleverly interlinked stories are a homeland of their own, and more than worth the journey.

    Michael Lowenthal

  • In Aliens and Other Stories, Kathleen Wheaton captures the disparate narratives of immigrants adrift in middle-class America — from the displaced and underemployed to the haunted legacy of Argentina’s desaparecidos. She imbues these stories with warmth and nuance and — perhaps most remarkably of all — with humor.

    Susan Coll

  • With a keen eye and a rich and precise prose, Kathleen Wheaton embarks on a journey into the hearts and minds of exiles and expatriates. From the alienated and somber atmosphere of Argentina’s dirty war to Madrid and Washington D.C., her characters are castaways, trying to find meaning in a reality that seems suspended in a moral vacuum. Aliens and Other Stories is a remarkable first book.

    Mario Diament, former editor of La Opinión

Additional Awards

  • Best Indie Books of 2013, Shelf Unbound

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