A Place in the World

Winner of the 2025 Drue Heinz Literature Prize

Stories of Ordinary People Experiencing Extraordinary Circumstances

The eleven stories in A Place in the World are character-driven portrayals of various lives transformed by random events or twists of fate. A young woman living on the coast of Maine confronts her painful past when her little brother comes to visit after being released from rehab, a hopeless gay hustler, in for the long con, instead finds himself falling in love while vacationing in Denmark, a failed New York City actor afraid of commitment goes on a comic rant and embraces an epiphany while cat-sitting for a friend. In separate, first-person narratives, a struggling husband and wife take turns describing the impact of a scandalous crisis in their marriage, and a settled suburban dad arrives at a beach house for the weekend, only to realize he robbed one of the other houseguests thirty-four years earlier. In this poignant, engaging collection, Gaythwaite offers compassion and surprising optimism while celebrating astonishing resilience in the face of life’s persistent challenges.