Description
These ten stories take us across the country—from rural Pennsylvania to Southern California to suburban Connecticut—and deep into characters struggling to find meaning in their day-to-day lives. The Theory of Light and Matter is a stunningly astute vision of contemporary American suburbia, full of tension, heartbreak, and emotional complexity—the work of an important new voice. Long Listed for the Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award ForeWord Magazine Book of the Year, Short Fiction One of the Best Books of the Year Kansas City Star • San Antonio Express-News
About the Author
Andrew Porter is the author of four books, including the short story collection The Theory of Light and Matter (Vintage/Penguin Random House), which won the Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction, the novel In Between Days (Knopf), which was a Barnes & Noble “Discover Great New Writers” selection, an IndieBound “Indie Next” selection, and the San Antonio Express News’s “Fictional Work of the Year,” the short story collection The Disappeared (Knopf), which was published in April 2023 and longlisted for The Story Prize, and the novel The Imagined Life, which is forthcoming from Knopf in 2025. Porter’s books have been published in foreign editions in the UK and Australia and translated into numerous languages, including French, Spanish, Dutch, Italian, Bulgarian, and Korean.In addition to winning the Flannery O’Connor Award, his collection, The Theory of Light and Matter, received Foreword Magazine’s “Book of the Year” Award for Short Fiction, was a finalist for The Steven Turner Award, The Paterson Prize and The WLT Book Award, was shortlisted for the William Saroyan International Prize for Writing, and was selected by both The Kansas City Star and The San Antonio Express-News as one of the “Best Books of the Year.”The recipient of a Pushcart Prize and fellowships from the James Michener-Copernicus Foundation, the W.K. Rose Foundation, and the Helene Wurlitzer Foundation, Porter’s short stories have appeared in One Story, Ploughshares, The Southern Review, The Threepenny Review, The Missouri Review, American Short Fiction, Narrative Magazine, Epoch, Story, The Colorado Review, Electric Literature, and Texas Monthly, among others. He has had his work read on NPR’s Selected Shorts and twice selected as one of the Distinguished Stories of the Year by Best American Short Stories. A graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, Porter is currently a Professor of English and Director of the Creative Writing Program at Trinity University in San Antonio.