Melanie Ritzenthaler
Graduate student Melanie Ritzenthaler‘s new story, “Fever Creek,” is published in the latest issue of Nashville Review.
Ritzenthaler is a doctoral student in OHIO’s English Department, where she specializes in Creative Writing (Fiction). Her short stories have appeared or are forthcoming in Ninth Letter, West Branch, Colorado Review, Salamander, and Hobart, among others. She holds a Master of Fine Arts from McNeese State University.
Her story Fever Creek begins:
During the tourist season in Breckenridge, it was my job to wade upstream and shake bags of pyrite, also known as fool’s gold, into the current. This was called seeding the creek. There were other attractions there, too—the abandoned mine shaft, slick underfoot and cold as a walk-in freezer, available for tours. A museum of glossy black-and-white photographs, a replica mining town complete with squeaky-hinged saloon doors. But the most popular activity was always found at the wide, shallow elbow of the creek, where tourists could pay ten dollars each for panning equipment and a glass vial.
Comments