Marie-Helene Bertino is the author of Parakeet, 2 A.M. at The Cat's Pajamas, and the story collection Safe as Houses. She was the 2017 Frank O'Connor International Short Story Fellow in Cork, Ireland. Her work has received the O. Henry Prize, the Pushcart Prize, the Iowa Short Fiction Award, the Mississippi Review Story Prize, and fellowships from MacDowell, Sewanee, and New York City's Center for Fiction, and has twice been featured on NPR's Selected Shorts. She teaches creative writing at New York University and Yale University and lives in Brooklyn, New York.
Happy People Don't Live Here (2025) Amber Sparks "Amber Sparks is one of my favorite living writers, and Happy People Don't Live Here is just as searing, funny, and unforgettable as I hoped. In the world of Amber Sparks, ten-year-old girls are extraordinary and ghosts are regular as rain. This is an enthralling novel about how mothers haunt their daughters and vice versa, and the beautiful fact of love after death. Alice and Fern feel like they have always existed and always will. Get ready for your new favorite novel."
Ghost Fish (2025) Stuart Pennebaker "A refreshingly playful take on magic realism, Ghost Fish turns the idea of a grief novel on its head. With wry humor and real feeling, this wise new writer shows the lengths we'll go to in order to cling to those we love. A pitch perfect portrayal of the chaos and heartbreak of sisterhood."
Daughter (2023) Claudia Dey "Daughter reads like a thrilling fever dream. Claudia Dey has figured out the recipe for a novel that becomes a climate, as immersive, honest, and addictive as family."
Old Flame (2023) Molly Prentiss "Molly Prentiss is a deeply empathic noticer who never fails to articulate the brutal, beautiful unseen elements of life. The kind of writing that elicits that involuntary kind of moan of recognition."
A Small Sacrifice for an Enormous Happiness (2023) Jai Chakrabarti "I meant to read only the first story of Jai Chakrabarti's masterful collection, A Small Sacrifice for an Enormous Happiness, but the characters quickly swept me away. They linger and charm, find and refuse their happinesses, parent themselves and others in endless, enigmatic ways. This is a collection that turns on breathtaking mettle and heart-rending delicacy. I can't imagine a reader who wouldn't find something precious in these pages."
Lungfish (2022) Meghan Gilliss "Tender, brutal, and faultless on the line, Lungfish masterfully explores how estranged family can be as present and punishing as weather. A poetic debut as rich and intentional as the sea."
What You Can See from Here (2021) Mariana Leky "As in life, What You Can See from Here reveals its significant players and their startling joys and losses, in patient, unexpected ways. The cumulative effect of this wise storytelling is colossal. A profound and beautiful novel."
Brother, Sister, Mother, Explorer (2021) Jamie Figueroa "Brother, Sister, Mother, Explorer is a haunting of a novel centered around the hustle of an utterly unforgettable brother and sister. Jamie Figueroa's faultless language surprises, enchants, and does nothing less than articulate that which is unseen and eaten by profound grief. Supervised by a wild, booted angel (a character for the ages), this marvel of a first novel seems powered by a force that wrecks itself and is made glorious, again and again, until its stunning conclusion. Singular, devastating, and divine."
Life Among the Terranauts (2021) Caitlin Horrocks "Caitlin Horrocks is one of America's finest story writers. I marvel at the language in Life Among the Terranauts, which expands, varies, and never slips, and at the book's gaze, exact and exacting, which seems able to inhabit every denizen of the world. The humanity contained in these stories stuns and lingers."
This Town Sleeps (2020) Dennis E Staples "Marked in its depths by an unflinching insight into what fills and depletes human hearts, This Town Sleeps leads you into desperate expanses then, surprise, turns skyward in shatteringly insightful moments that leave you breathless. Its tender creatures, lupine, yearning and failing, inhabited my mind for days. A heartbreaker that laughs through its pain, a gem. Dennis E. Staples is an important new voice. How lucky we are."
