Skylit: Animal Wife by Lara Ehrlich, with Amber Sparks

Oct
1:30am
Skylit: Animal Wife by Lara Ehrlich, with Amber Sparks

By Skylight Books
Animal Wife (Red Hen Press)
*order your copy here!*
A girl born with feathers undertakes a quest for the mother who abandoned her. An indecisive woman drinks Foresight, only to become stymied by the futures branching before her. A girl acts on her desire for a childhood friend as a monster draws closer to the shore. A widow invites a bear to hibernate in her den. These are the stories of Lara Ehrlich's collection, stories of women’s transformations from girls into wives, mothers, and monsters.
Praise for Animal Wife:
“From the first sentence Animal Wife grabbed me and never let go. Sensual and intelligent, with gorgeous prose, it made me dizzy with its exploration and illumination of the inner and outer lives of girls and women.”—Ann Hood, New York Times bestselling author
“In this sparkling debut collection, Ehrlich draws on the dark undersides of fairytales to portray the growth, strangeness, and ferocity of childhood with haunting beauty. Each story takes us deeper into the rabbit hole: with mythical monsters and Ovidian transformations, girls discover their own strength and darkness. As the women in these stories cast about for freedom, they become dangerous beings themselves; Ehrlich reminds us how thin the line is between violence and desire. She is a master observer of the magic and mystery that lurk at the edge of our lives. This collection is the arrival of a startling and undeniable new talent in the world of genre-breaking fiction.”—Blair Hurley, author of The Devoted
“The stories in Lara Ehrlich’s Animal Wife are gorgeous and heartbreaking. They glide into each other, refract, and expand outward again, echoing seasons and change and longing. They cause astonishment and wonder. They ask: what does it mean to be in a body? What do we ever know about girlhood? It is a complex and rewarding read.”—Kristen Arnett, author of Felt in the Jaw and Mostly Dead Things
Lara Ehrlich is the author of the short story collection Animal Wife (Red Hen Press, 2020), which won Red Hen’s Fiction Award, judged by Ann Hood. Lara’s stories are published in F(r)iction, Hunger Mountain, StoryQuarterly, The Normal School, and elsewhere, and she is the winner of a 2019 IHAF In-House Creativity Award and numerous Council for Advancement and Support of Education (CASE) awards for her feature writing. She lives in Connecticut with her husband and daughter. Learn more about Lara's work at www.LaraEhrlich.com and connect with her on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.
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And I Do Not Forgive You (Liveright)
Boldly blending fables and myths with apocalyptic technologies, Amber Sparks holds a singular role in the canon of the weird. Having garnered acclaim for her shimmering collection The Unfinished World, she reaches uncanny heights with And I Do Not Forgive You. In prose that beats with urgency, these contemporary stories read like the best of fairytales--which are, as Sparks writes, just a warning disguised as a wish.
Taken together, this hypnotic and otherworldly collection seeks to reclaim the lives of the silenced. And what is history, Sparks asks, but the chance to dig up our skeletons and give them new stories? Humorous and unapologetically fierce, And I Do Not Forgive You offers a mosaic of an all-too-real world that too often fails to listen to its goddesses.
Praise for And I Do Not Forgive You:
"[Sparks] impresses with her exceptional collection of wry, feminist stories.... Some stories smuggle incredible emotional impact into surprisingly few pages.... Sparks's sardonic wit never distracts from her polished dismantling of everyday and extraordinary abuses. Readers will love this remarkable, deliciously caustic collection."--Publishers Weekly [starred review]
"What joyful play and heart and movement in these stories, full of permission and the thrum of ideas bursting and growing on the page. To read one is like a bon-bon on a silver platter with a lit sparkler stuck inside."--Aimee Bender, author of The Color Master
"Amber Sparks' stories are, precisely, like her name: precious things delivered in a burst of fire and light."--Carmen Maria Machado, author of Her Body & Other Parties
"Re-appropriating fairy tales, urban legends, and supernatural fantasies, Amber Sparks' startling kaleidoscopic visions re-cast familiar heroines in their own stories. Reading this was a delight!"--Ling Ma, author of Severance
Amber Sparks is the author of several short story collections, including The Unfinished World and Other Stories, and I Do Not Forgive You (Liveright). Her essays and fiction can be found widely in print and online, in places like The Paris Review, NYMag, Granta, and Tin House.
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