Short Stories: Literary Fiction, Apr. 2022, Pt. 3 | Prepub Alert

Short stories from award-winning authors, often with their first collections. 

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Bieker, Chelsea. Heartbroke. Catapult. Apr. 2022. 288p. ISBN 9781646221271. $26. LITERARY

Folk, Kate. Out There: Stories. Random. Apr. 256p. ISBN 9780593231463. $27. Downloadable. LITERARY

Friedlander, Omer. The Man Who Sold Air in the Holy Land: Stories. Random. Apr. 2022. 256p. ISBN 9780593242971. $27. Downloadable. LITERARY

MacLeod, Alexander. Animal Person: Stories. Farrar. Apr. 2022. 256p. ISBN 9780374602222. $27. LITERARY

Mirosevich, Toni. Spell Heaven. Catapult. Apr. 2022. ISBN 9781640095168. pap. $16.95. LITERARY

Newman, Leigh. Nobody Gets Out Alive: Stories. Scribner. Apr. 2022. 320p. ISBN 9781982180300. $27. CD. LITERARY

Rubio, Marytza K. Maria, Maria: & Other Stories. Liveright: Norton. Apr. 2022. 224p. ISBN 9781324090540. $24.95. LITERARY

After debuting with the multi-award-finalist Godshot, Bieker returns with stories of Heartbroke characters whose loves and losses unfold in California’s sunstruck Central Valley. Former Wallace Stegner Fellow Folk debuts with a collection of absurdist stories, including Out There, a piece published in The New Yorker about a woman whose attempts to use a dating app are disrupted by incredibly handsome yet artificial men deployed by Russian hackers. Acquired in a two-book deal that includes his debut novel, NYU Starworks fellow Friedlander’s The Man Who Sold Air in the Holy Land is set in Israel and the Middle East and features outsiders who must contend with past sorrow or future uncertainty. A second collection after Light Lifting, which was short-listed for Giller, Commonwealth, and Frank O’Connor honors, MacLeod’s Animal Person explores those moments when one’s life is about to change (25,000-copy first printing). From poet Mirosevich, also author of the award-winning nonfiction Pink Harvest, Spell Heaven offers linked stories about a lesbian couple finding happiness in a coastal town. From Newman, whose memoir Still Points North was a finalist for the National Book Critic Circle’s John Leonard Prize, Nobody Gets Out Alive highlights women struggling to get by in rugged Alaska (50,000-copy first printing). Witchcraft, blue jaguars, and a California rainforest–set novella starring Maria, Maria and possibly more Marias all feature in this mystical debut from former PEN America Emerging Voices Fellow Rubio.

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Barbara Hoffert

Barbara Hoffert (bhoffert@mediasourceinc.com, @BarbaraHoffert on Twitter) is Editor, LJ Prepub Alert; winner of ALA's Louis Shores Award for reviewing; and past president, awards chair, and treasurer of the National Book Critics Circle, which awarded her its inaugural Service Award in 2023.

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