A Fool for Christmas, published in late 2019, is our second fine press collaboration with Allan Gurganus, and just like the 1997 It Had Wings limited edition book (long out of print), Allan created remarkably rich illustrations and wrote an illuminating afterword for this keepsake book.

Specifically, Allan created eleven pen and ink and watercolor drawings as well as writing a “Tale Behind the Tale” which details the origins and evolution of his modern day fable. This comic, yet emotionally heartfelt, tale made its debut on NPR’s All Things Considered in 2004 and has riveted listeners ever since. This is the FIRST EVER appearance in print of a story that quickly became a holiday classic. Set in a North Carolina shopping mall and narrated by pet store manager Vernon Ricketts, the tale takes readers on a wild and empathetic journey that only a master storyteller could imagine.

It’s the Christmas season, and Vernon splits his time selling irresistible puppies and kittens festooned with holiday bows and shielding the mall’s loiterers from its over-zealous manager, “Terminator” Vanderlip. Just days before Christmas, Vernon notices a small, bedraggled girl in a worn overcoat desperately trying to blend into the mall’s background. Sensing she’s a runaway in trouble, Vernon feels obliged to help. His kindness and their chance encounter will produce a Christmas miracle that becomes a legend as it changes lives.

You can read about the project in this Indy Weekly article. Additionally, you can listen to an 18 minute segment of NPR’s State of Things where host Frank Stasio, Allan, and I discussed the creative process of collaborating in a remarkably short time frame (which mirrored how the story itself was originally written in an intense burst of creativity).

Only a handful of copies of the third printing, which do not have hand-printed letterpress covers, are available for $18.(The story was re-published alongside nine other works in Norton’s The Uncollected Stories of Allan Gurganus—but that version will not include the unique and dramatic typographic design, nor Allan’s drawings and afterword. I’m hopeful that Norton, Allan, and DUP will agree now that this illustrated chapbook should be brought back and kept in print.

Big thanks to Allan Gurganus for his work within the world of fiction to craft stories that both reflect and shape us — and give us pause, to think and feel things, and see more in our lives and our surroundings as a result.

This book was a unique collaborative venture between Duke Libraries, (which archived Allan’s papers in 2018), Duke University Press (who initially distributed the books), and Horse & Buggy Press. Hopefully this book kickstarts a wave of collaborations to bring unpublished works out of special collection libraries and send them out into the larger world of readers in the form of new books. Who knows what other treasures are in special collections at libraries across the country?