Description
In Thisbe Nissen's award-winning debut story collection, characters teeter on the verge of love, of life, of oncoming cataclysms after which Things Will Never Be the Same. Against the varied backdrops of Grateful Dead shows, anniversary parties, sickrooms, and bright Manhattan vestibules, Nissen traces the joy, terror, and electric surprise that flash between people as they suddenly connect. A fifteen-year-old girl whose mother is slowly dying finds solace in the bed of her best friend's older brother. A wife remembers the early romance in her marriage as she watches her husband's hand, shaky with Parkinson's, lift a bite of food to his mouth. Longtime friends are jolted by their unforeseen attraction to each other; new lovers feel their way by instinct in vans, on futons, an during risky, late-night conversation. Knowing, often hilarious, and always pitch-perfect, Nissen's tales hang inside those moments when the heart is acting and the head is watching, hopeful that the heart is doing the right thing.
About the Author
Thisbe Nissen is the author of three novels,Our Lady of the Prairie(Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2018),Osprey Island(Knopf, 2004),The Good People of New York(Knopf, 2001), and a story collection,Out of the Girls' Room and into the Night(University of Iowa Press, 1999, winner of the John Simmons Short Fiction Award). She is also the co-author withErin ErgenbrightofThe Ex-Boyfriend Cookbook, a collection of stories, recipes, and art collages. Her fiction has been published inThe Iowa Review,The American Scholar,Seventeen, andThe Virginia Quarterly Review, and anthologized inThe Iowa Award: The Best Stories 1991-2000andBest American Mystery Stories. Her nonfiction has appeared inVogue,Glamour,PreservationandThe Believer, and is featured in several essay anthologies.She has been the recipient of fellowships from the James Michener-Copernicus Society, The University of Iowa, Bread Loaf Writers' Conference, Yaddo, and the MacDowell Colony, and was the 19th Zale Writer-in-Residence at Tulane University. She has taught at Columbia University, the Iowa Writers' Workshop, Brandeis University, The New School's Eugene Lang College and in the low residency MFA program at Pacific University. These days, she teaches undergrad, MFA and PhD students at Western Michigan University.She and her husband,Jay Baron Nicorvo, are parents of two rescue cats, many sprightly chickens, and one intriguing human child. They dream, one day, of raising goats.
0
0
