Above Ground

A group of award-winning and new authors have contributed to this anthology of short fiction and are donating the net proceeds to Doctors without Borders and Jubilee USA. Above Ground is a blend of the print and online worlds that is unique because it is generative. The stories and novel excerpts in Above Ground are what publisher Harvard Square Editions has dubbed Living Fiction, work by contemporary authors seeking to stimulate a literary dialog. Living Fiction invites readers to join in and converse with the 19 authors, mostly Ivy League alumni, whose email addresses are in the book. “We are delighted to see the excitement that advance copies of Above Ground have already generated, and hope others will replicate this interactive approach to literary diffusion,” says Geoff Fox, an Above Ground author who lives in Spain. Themes range from romance with a ghost, to a modern Grapes-of-Wrath family quest, to lawlessness on a remote island “paradise,” to surfing the “Outernet” of the collective unconscious, to wisdom that carries an immigrant cleaning woman through hardship. The variety and unexpected forms of the authors’ intelligence and wit is enthralling. Above Ground is the first in a series of anthologies, and speaks especially to writers who might want to participate in future volumes. Harvard Square Editions will play a vital role in the Harvard Community, fulfilling its need for a press that publishes fiction.

Proceeds from the sale of this book go to the Nobel Prize winning charity Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), an international medical humanitarian organization created by doctors and journalists in France in 1971.

Today, MSF provides aid in nearly 60 countries to people whose survival is threat-ened by violence, neglect, or catastrophe, primarily due to armed conflict, epidemics, malnutrition, exclusion from healthcare, or natural disasters.

Proceeds from Harvard Square Editions anthologies have also gone to Jubilee USA Network to break the chains of debt and feed children in over sixty countries. Jubilee works for responsible global lending practices and engages in public education, research, poicy analysis and advocacy.