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Alexandra Kleeman

Alexandra Kleeman is a NYC-based writer of fiction and nonfiction, and a PhD candidate in Rhetoric at UC Berkeley. Her fiction has been published in The Paris Review, Zoetrope: All-Story, Conjunctions, Guernica, and Gulf Coast, among others. Nonfiction essays and reportage have appeared in Tin House, n 1, and The Guardian. Her work has received scholarships and grants from Bread Loaf, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, Santa Fe Art Institute, and ArtFarm Nebraska. She is the author of the forthcoming debut novel You Too Can Have A Body Like Mine (Harper, 2015) and Intimations (Harper, 2016), a short story collection.

Genres: Science Fiction, Literary Fiction

Novels

You Too Can Have a Body Like Mine (2015)
Something New Under the Sun (2021)

Collections

Intimations (2016)

Alexandra Kleeman recommends

The Sky Was Ours (2024)
Joe Fassler
"Infused with wonder and keen insight onto our shared world, Fassler has crafted a tender, questing ode to impossible dreams, and to the fragile but very real possibilities they open up in us. Rooted in our era of climate crisis and disillusionment but reaching out for something liberatory, it's the rare book that serves as both a provocation and a balm."

The Extinction of Irena Rey (2024)
Jennifer Croft
"Generous and strange, funny and disconcerting, The Extinction of Irena Rey is a playground for the mind and an entrancing celebration of the sociality of reading, writing, and translation written by a master practitioner of all three."

About Uncle (2024)
Rebecca Gisler
"Wry and funny and rich in strange new forms of discomfort, About Uncle is a slim volume that cuts deep, revealing the soft ligaments of family relations and letting them gleam under the light."

Jonathan Abernathy You Are Kind (2023)
Molly McGhee
"Molly McGhee is a fearlessly inventive and exquisitely poised writer, one who knows how to aim right at the jugular of today's optimization-obsessed technocratic capitalism. Jonathan Abernathy You Are Kind is trippy, incisive, and, most importantly, riotously funny."

Rouge (2023)
Mona Awad
"There is nobody else like Mona Awad, daring enough to plunge her hands--rings and all--into the viscera of story and discover an unsettling beauty within. Rouge is her most magnetic work yet, a thrilling dystopian romp that knows that beneath the glossy, aspirational veneer of self-care lurks the same old gothic abyss."

The Men Can't Be Saved (2023)
Ben Purkert
"Funny, witty, and incisor-sharp, Purkert nails down the hypocrisies of modern masculinity and capitalism with the graceful hand of a poet. This novel says so much so well about the absurd moment in which we, grudgingly, live."

Hangman (2023)
Maya Binyam
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Emergency (2023)
Kathleen Alcott
"Skillfully wrought and possessed of an exquisite eye for detail, this marvel of a collection contains enough insight and wisdom to fill several books. Kathleen Alcott proves again that she is one of her generation's sharpest and most gifted writers, with her hand over the beating heart of our complicated, crisis-ridden nation."

Lucky Dogs (2023)
Helen Schulman
"Crackling with wit and daring insight, Lucky Dogs is a sharp-toothed exploration of trauma - the way it rewrites the soul, and its catastrophic fallout. Schulman understands the choreography of betrayal and risk like no other, skillfully mapping the hidden corners of her characters' hearts."

The Thick and the Lean (2023)
Chana Porter
"Decadent and richly imagined, The Thick and the Lean topples expectations and skillfully re-maps vice and virtue, indulgence and shame as we know them. This book is wildly new and deliciously satisfying, and Porter is one of our moment's most original seers."

First Comes Summer (2023)
Maria Hesselager
"Marvelously imagined and fiercely real, First Comes Summer has a tender brutality to it that feels timeless and fresh at the same time. Engrossing, primal, and very very beautiful."

Cousins (2023)
Aurora Venturini
"Brimming with life, humor, and a vital twist of darkness, Venturini's English-language debut marks the arrival of a singular voice with a sharp, visceral approach to story. Reading Cousins is like being inside the belly of a wild, rambunctious beast, going where it goes, exhilarated no matter how perilous the journey."

Y/N (2023)
Esther Yi
"Sumptuous, precise, and full of pulsing, startling life, Yi captures with finesse the rhythms of internet voyeurism, the corporeality of parasocial desire, and the very heartbeat of contemporary longing."

The Last Catastrophe (2023)
Allegra Hyde
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Cursed Bread (2023)
Sophie Mackintosh
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The Women Could Fly (2022)
Megan Giddings
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The Midcoast (2022)
Adam White
"Vividly drawn and movingly told, The Midcoast is a searching, honest, and evocative portrait of human relationships, hometown secrets, and the hidden machinations of privilege. Adam White's debut enthralls, a modern classic from a bold and insightful new voice in fiction."

Little Rabbit (2022)
Alyssa Songsiridej
"Scintillating and seductive, almost unbearably perceptive, Little Rabbit announces the arrival of a brilliant new voice in literature, one who knows how to make the body sing."

Acts of Service (2022)
Lillian Fishman
"Taut, thorny, and sublimely fraught, Acts of Service stares straight into the white-hot center of desire with a cool, incisive eye. This book is electric."

Violets (2022)
Kyung-Sook Shin
"Kyung-Sook Shin has a way of seeing past the smooth surface of societal appearance and into the fragile, obscure psychological space that lies just beneath, where her characters ache in ways that feel both recognizable and possessed of deep insight. I don't know if I've ever read a book that so masterfully captures the subtle desperation of seeking a desire that can be your own in a fast-changing world."

Happy for You (2022)
Claire Stanford
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Portrait of an Unknown Lady (2022)
María Gainza
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Hourglass (2022)
Keiran Goddard
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Be Here to Love Me at the End of the World (2022)
Sasha Fletcher
"This book roils with beauty, with enthusiasm, with love for both the miniscule and oversized wonders of the world, it holds the griefs and violence of our moment tenderly in its outstretched hands and asks you, the reader, what we should do about them. Sasha Fletcher is a rare gem of a writer, and this novel is one of a kind."

Win Me Something (2021)
Kyle Lucia Wu
"Taut, engrossing, and masterfully observed, Win Me Something announces a powerful and luminescent new literary voice in Kyle Lucia Wu."

Agatha of Little Neon (2021)
Claire Luchette
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Intimacies (2021)
Katie Kitamura
"Saturated with enigmatic longing, Intimacies peels back the layers of sympathy, antipathy, and morality that both connect and divide us from others, unearthing something precious beneath. Katie Kitamura is a revelatory interpreter of the human heart, in all its brilliance and obscurity."

The Atmospherians (2021)
Alex McElroy
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Her Here (2021)
Amanda Dennis
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Milk Fed (2021)
Melissa Broder
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Land of Big Numbers (2021)
Te-Ping Chen
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True Love (2020)
Sarah Gerard
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Hex (2020)
Rebecca Dinerstein Knight
"Hex is neon-bright and guided by a fierce, scintillating interest in the innermost chambers of the human heart, where melancholic and bright humors mingle together. In every line you hear the voice of a writer who knows how to lead you expertly into the place where the story is most alive: spooky, shifty, darkly funny, and delectable in every way."

The New Me (2019)
Halle Butler
"Halle Butler has a way of looking at our 21st-century neoliberalist condition that simultaneously exposes its brutality and renders that same brutality absurd, hilarious, fizzy with humor. She's an incisive, curmudgeonly bard of the uniquely precarious times we live in, and it is crucial that you read her immediately."

The Lonesome Bodybuilder (2018)
Yukiko Motoya
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Open Me (2018)
Lisa Locascio
"Captivating and darkly clever, Locasio's debut melds self-discovery and self-abnegation with raw, muscular grace. By turns beguiling, guileless, and penetratingly felt, this book seethes with eroticism, both physical and emotional—you won't dare to pry yourself away from it."

Laura & Emma (2018)
Kate Greathead
"A big-hearted book, tenderly intelligent and mirthfully incisive in its exploration of family, class, and the difficulty of reconciling our own natures with the way we nurture others. In Greathead's capable hands, Laura & Emma become luminously real, a lens through which the rarefied, often contradictory world of elite New York comes charmingly alive."

What We Lose (2017)
Zinzi Clemmons
"Wise and tender and possessed of a fiercely insightful intimacy, What We Lose is a lyrical ode to the complexities of race, love, illness, parenthood, and the hairline fractures they leave behind. Zinzi Clemmons has gifted the reader a rare and thoughtful emotional topography, a map to the mirror regions of their own heart."

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