For a school with a large Pegasus statue in front of the Glenn G. Bartle Library, it’s not surprising that we appreciate tales of unicorns and zombies. “The Miniature Wife and Other Stories,” a collection of 18 short tales containing these two aforementioned topics, recently won the Binghamton University John Gardner Fiction Book Award. On Tuesday March 17, University of Kentucky professor Manuel Gonzales, author of this book, was invited to our campus by the Binghamton Center for Writers, where he read a few excerpts to University students from his compilation of wild stories.

“Thank you for having me out here on St. Patrick’s Day and for coming relatively sober,” Gonzales said. “This is not a book I ever really expect to get that kind of … I mean it has zombies and unicorns and a werewolf that maybe isn’t a werewolf, and one doesn’t usually expect that to win any of those accolades.”

Gonzales started off the reading with “All of Me,” the first of his two stories that focuses on the lives of zombie characters.

“The only real thing you need to know about ‘All of Me’ is that the narrator is a zombie, but he also has to work in an office and is in love with the receptionist, Barbara,” Gonzales said. “But he can’t go out on a date with Barbara because she’s married and because he’s a zombie.”

This piece focused on a man who recently turned into a zombie and tries to hide his horrific transformation from the people with whom he works. The woman he has a crush on, Barbara, confides in him, telling him that her husband has cheated on her, while he daydreams and thinks about how much he loves her. Gonzales explored this zombie’s mind, revealing to the audience how complex life can be for this dead creature.

“I think some of these things that I write are weird and upsetting but are also funny, or at least I think that they’re funny,” Gonzales said.

He revealed that his unconventional story often gets interpreted differently depending on the audience, with some people classifying it as either sad or funny.

The pertinently titled “One-Horned and Wild-Eyed” refers to the focus of the unicorn in the second story he read. This piece explores the mind of a man who has just purchased a unicorn, which helps him realize he has not been living the life he wants. Doing odd jobs to support himself for the last few years of his life, this unicorn makes him realize he wants to find a steady job and start living a more fulfilling and eventful life.

His wife, jealous that the unicorn is what inspired her husband to clean up his act, remarks how she wants to make a pair of pants or jacket out of the mythical creature. Gonzales explores a dysfunctional marriage in this story, offering the unicorn to the audience as a reminder of how special life can be when you choose to make it so.

Gonzales took questions from the crowd. Students asked what advice he has for developing writers, and Gonzales told them to pick up a random situation and go with it. His inspiration for “One-Horned and Wild-Eyed” came to him when his daughter received a plush unicorn in a happy meal.

“I started thinking, what if I did have a unicorn and where would’ve I gotten it and maybe it would be a better story if it wasn’t me who that had a unicorn but a friend from high school,” Gonzales said.

Despite the fantastical elements, Gonzales’ work often focuses on himself.

“There’s a lot of me in this,” Gonzales said.

Some stories are autobiographical while some have nothing to do with him, and he told the audience that a few pieces from his collection are just stories of how he would choose to deal with hypothetical situations.