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الاستماع والقراءة

Marian Crotty

Winner of the 2023 Autumn House Fiction Prize, Near Strangers is a collection of eight tightly crafted short stories that follow unexpected connections and tell of queer life in America.

Award-winning author Marian Crotty's sophomore collection centers on resilient female protagonists and offers a view into queer life and love outside of its major coastal cities. The characters in Crotty’s collection are searching—for understanding, acceptance, or forgiveness. 

In the title story, an elderly rape crisis volunteer’s advocacy for a survivor leads her to reexamine her role in estrangement from her son; in “Halloween,” a queer teen is counseled through heartbreak by her unlucky-in-love grandmother; and in “Family Resemblance,” a group of families whose children share the same sperm donor is disrupted by the arrival of a minor celebrity. 

While marginalization, loneliness, and bigotry hover in the distance of Near Strangers, the book’s tone is hopeful and invites readers to reflect on our shared human experience with empathy.

Autumn House Press

Autumn House Press Fiction Prize

Near Strangers

Salvatore Pane

Salvatore Pane’s The Neorealist in Winter is a collection of eleven short stories that explore what it means to be human in an age of media oversaturation. Utilizing methods of speculative, historical, and postmodern storytelling, Pane grapples with legacies of immigration, poverty, toxic masculinity, and moral failures, while focusing on working-class issues, family drama, and PTSD. Following eleven Italian narrators, Pane builds a cast of cinematic characters across disparate times and places—a struggling director attends a house party in the la dolce vita of 1960s Rome, gangsters chase a low-level lottery runner in coal valley Scranton, a woman contemplates experimental surgery to purge memories of her childhood trauma in Minnesota, and a pro wrestling promoter descends into self-denial through his autobiography.

Neorealist in Winter

Wendy Wimmer

Wendy Wimmer’s debut short story collection, Entry Level, contains a range of characters who are trying to find, assert, or salvage their identities. These fifteen stories center around the experience of being underemployed—whether by circumstance, class, gender, race, or other prevailing factors—and the toll this takes on an individual. Wimmer pushes the boundaries of reality, creating funny, fantastic, and at times terrifying stories. Her characters undergo feats of endurance, heartbreak, and loneliness, all while trying to succeed in a world that so often undervalues them. From a young marine biologist suffering from imposter syndrome and a haunting to a bingo caller facing another brutal snowstorm and a creature that may or not be an angel, Wimmer’s characters are all confronting an oppressive universe that seemingly operates against them or is, at best, indifferent to them. These stories reflect on the difficulties of modern-day survival and remind us that piecing together a life demands both hope and resilience. https://youtu.be/UVU-CVPZD78.

Entry Level

Kevin Honold

This debut novel tells the story of nine-year-old Raymond, nicknamed “Ray Moon” by Molly, his adoptive caretaker, a waitress, and the former partner of his recently deceased uncle. These two outcasts rely on one another for survival, and their bond forms the heart of this book. Living in a trailer atop a mesa in the high desert of New Mexico in 1968, Raymond ages quickly amid hostile circumstances. With the help of a keen imagination that Molly inspires, he navigates various forms of loss and exploitation amid enduring hardship. Kevin Honold’s deft and trance-like prose is interspersed with sharp insights and brings attention to the displacement of Native Americans, the hardships of capitalism, the ills of misogyny, and the raw hurt of living a displaced or marginalized life. This is a story of endurance, memory, and unceasing change.

Molly

Michael X. Wang

Steeped in a long history of violence and suffering, Michael X. Wang’s debut collection of short stories interrogates personal and political events set against the backdrop of China that are both real and perceived, imagined and speculative. Wang plunges us into the fictional Chinese village of Xinchun and beyond to explore themes of tradition, family, modernity, and immigration in a country grappling with its modern identity. Further News of Defeat is rich with characters who have known struggle and defeat and who find themselves locked in pivotal moments of Chinese history—such as World War II and the Tiananmen Square massacre—as they face losses of the highest order and still find cause for revival.

Further News of Defeat

Hadley Moore

Not Dead Yet studies the uncertainties of loss, turning a gaze toward the often-silenced voices of the infirm, elderly, and adolescent. Rich in humor and honesty, Hadley Moore’s debut collection of short stories presents a contemporary set of narratives from a lush cast of characters. We find the protagonists of her stories tenderly revealing their pain after the loss of loved ones and coping with the voids left by the passing of youth, happiness, and fulfillment. https://youtu.be/1fK95ztQVdM. Thanks to Madville Publishing for including the story in their anthology!

Not Dead Yet and Other Stories

Glori Simmons

Glori Simmons’s new book, Carry You, is a timely collection of linked short stories that examines how war shapes and distorts our understanding of family, friends, country, and self. Simmons draws out the humanity of her characters, their flaws and failings, their hopes and desires, and their dreams for the future. These stories show that the human capacity for violence, compassion, and love are not bound by time or place.

Carry You

Andrew Bourelle

Andrew Bourelle’s novel, Heavy Metal, gives us a glimpse into the life of Danny, a teenager who seeks peace and stability after the suicide of his mother.

Heavy Metal

Kathy Anderson

The debut collection of short stories by Kathy Anderson. Darkly funny, these stories explore gender, sexuality, and family dynamics.

Bull

Sarah Gerkensmeyer

In this first story collection, Gerkensmeyer crafts broken fairy tales that re-imagine the life of women.

What You Are Now Enjoying

Mathew Pitt

In his debut short story collection, Pitt pulls his characters from the background, eschewing convention and facing the ironies and difficulties of life in the twenty-first century.

Autumn House Press Fiction Prize - سلسلة الكتب

Autumn House Press Fiction Prize - سلسلة الكتب

Autumn House Press Fiction Prize كتب بالترتيب

الاستماع والقراءة