Third Place 2018
Short Story
Feathered Quill
Book Awards
It Won't Stay Light Forever
Collected Stories
"In the end, stories are a composite of things, some real, some imagined, some you experience, some you read about in the paper. Hopefully, pulled together in a story, they tell some truth. But at the same time they are fictional. The 'truth' the fiction writer strives for is not 'a true story,' in that sense, but a fictional story that somehow reveals some universal truth about us, about our lives, about what we believe, how we feel about things, how we feel about each other."
Ed Weyhing
Nineteen stories of heartache and humor, fear and hope, devastation and survival:
- A cabbie is shaken by his experiences driving a mute old gentleman.
- A little boy's innocent gesture sets in motion a morning of terror.
- A cleaning lady's childhood artwork inspires her at a critical moment.
- An embarrassed carpenter nails his customer's front door shut.
- A mentally-disabled teenager tries to rescue a frightened child.
- A mysterious woman, mocked by her neighbors, takes sweet revenge.
You can see and hear Ed read the story The Hundred-Dollar Tip, included in It Won't Stay Light Forever, on C-Span's program Book TV.
Book Club Discussion Questions
Order multiple
It Won't Stay Light Forever here
Speaking from the Heart
Handsome and quiet, Mbasa Kilu walks with difficulty. He was born with two club feet, and there are many things he can't do well, but he can kick a football like a champion. When he was a little boy, playing by himself, his grandmother gave him a football to kick, suggesting he aim for a big tree nearby. Over the years he has gotten expert at this, and when he is with his friends on the local soccer team, he kicks his football up into a huge tree on the sidelines while they practice.
One day a visiting American is amazed when he sees Mbasa Kilu kicking the football with precision high into the tree. Soon a scout from an NFL team visits, and Mbasa Kilu is off to a very different life in the United States. After a spectacular beginning, his career abruptly ends. But for many years his record will stand for the longest field goal in NFL history.
All his life girls have mostly shied away from him or ignored him except for Ofi Leiya, fond of him from their school days, but in love with his best friend. is fortunes in love change, but not before he has to outwit a corrupt gang which is robbing and terrorizing people in his village at home.
About Ed Weyhing
Ed Weyhing was an avid reader and writer from childhood on. He graduated from the University of Notre Dame and San Diego State University, and served in the U.S. Navy. After that he was a co-founder and CEO of a computer software company. Retiring young, he was able to follow his enduring interest in writing fiction.
He received his MFA in writing from Vermont College of Fine Arts. Many of his published short stories and several new ones are contained in this volume.
He is also the author of a novel, Speaking from the Heart. Until his death in 2016, he lived in Rhode Island with his wife Mary. They were the parents of three sons.
Ed Weyhing's stories have been published in Glimmer Train, The Crescent Review, Weber Studies, Cimarron Review, Witness – American Humor, Short Story, Ampersand Press, the anthology Generation to Generation (Papier-Mache Press), The Panhandler and Calliope.