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Book Cover for: Pets, Ryunosuke Akutagawa

Pets

Ryunosuke Akutagawa

This anthology collects original writing and art by novelists, poets, and academics about their pets, including a killer chihuahua, a catatonic toy poodle, a contraband cat, a backyard full of endangered desert tortoises, five forgotten parakeets, and a skinny ex-racehorse named Joe. From legends like Ann Beattie and Christine Schutt to cult figures like Scott McClanahan and Tao Lin, this anthology collects writing from some of today's best literary talent. Edited by Jordan Castro with contributions by Ryunosuke Akutagawa, Ann Beattie, Raegan Bird, Blake Butler, Ryan C. K. Choi, Michael W. Clune, Patty Yumi Cottrell, Annie DeWitt, Chelsea Hodson, Yuka Igarashi, Kristen Iskandrian, Mark Leidner, Tao Lin, Scott McClanahan, Sarah Manguso, David Nutt, Precious Okoyomon, Sam Pink, Nicolette Polek, Kathryn Scanlan, Christine Schutt, and Mallory Whitten.

Book Details

  • Publisher: Tyrant Books
  • Publish Date: Jun 16th, 2020
  • Pages: 224
  • Language: English
  • Edition: undefined - undefined
  • Dimensions: 8.20in - 5.50in - 0.90in - 0.70lb
  • EAN: 9781733535991
  • Categories: • General

About the Author

Cottrell, Patty Yumi: - Patty Yumi Cottrell is the author of Sorry to Disrupt the Peace (McSweeney's). She lives in Florida.
Hodson, Chelsea: - Chelsea Hodson is the author of the book of essays, Tonight I'm Someone Else, and the chapbook, Pity the Animal.
Igarashi, Yuka: - Yuka Igarashi is the editor in chief of Soft Skull Press, the series editor of PEN America's Best Debut Short Stories anthology, and the publisher of Fifty Storms, a showcase of new Japanese writing in translation. She founded Catapult magazine and was formerly managing editor of Granta.
Bird, Raegan: - Raegan Bird is an artist currently living and working in Salem, Massachusetts. This is her first published story.
Beattie, Ann: - Ann Beattie's eleven short story collections (most recently The Accomplished Guest) are filled with dogs.
Pink, Sam: - Sam Pink Sam Pink brings the ham, you bring the mustard. Books available through Soft Skull press, and Lazy Fascist press. Art available through instagram.com/sam_pink_art
Akutagawa, Ryunosuke: - Ryūnosuke Akutagawa (1892-1927), born in Tokyo, Japan, was the author of more than 350 works of fiction and nonfiction, including Rashōmon, The Spider's Thread, Hell Screen, Kappa, and In a Grove.
Polek, Nicolette: - Nicolette Polek is the author of Imaginary Museums (forthcoming from Soft Skull, January 2020). Her stories can be found in New York Tyrant, Egress, Fanzine, Hobart, Chicago Quarterly Review, and elsewhere. She has an MFA from the University of Maryland.
Scanlan, Kathryn: - Kathryn Scanlan is the author of Aug 9--Fog (2019) and The Dominant Animal (2020). Her work has been published in NOON, Fence, Granta, and Egress. She lives in Los Angeles.
Schutt, Christine: - Christine Schutt is the author of three novels and three short story collections, most recently Pure Hollywood. A Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award finalist, she is the recipient of the New York Foundation of the Arts and Guggenheim Fellowships. Schutt lives and teaches in New York.
Whitten, Mallory: - Mallory Whitten Mallory Whitten lives with her partner Chris and their dog Grace in Ohio. She has two books published.
Nutt, David: - David Nutt is the author of The Great American Suction (Tyrant Books). He lives in Ithaca, New York, with his wife and dog and two cats.
Okoyomon, Precious: - Precious Okoyomon is a poet and artist living in Brooklyn.
Butler, Blake: - Blake Butler is the author of five book-length works of fiction, including 300,000,000 (Harper Perennial), Sky Saw (Tyrant Books), There is No Year (Harper Perennial), Scorch Atlas (Featherproof Books), and Ever (Calamari Press), as well as the nonfictional Nothing: A Portrait of Insomnia (Harper Perennial). His fourth novel, Alice Knott, will be published by Riverhead in 2019. He lives in Atlanta.
DeWitt, Annie: - Annie DeWitt is a novelist, short story writer, essayist and ex-racehorse rider forever seeking her perfect OTTB. She is the Founder of Roxbury Writers' Residency and calls the Catskills home.
Iskandrian, Kristen: - Kristen Iskandrian is the author of the novel MOTHEREST as well as numerous short stories, which have been published in The Best American Short Stories, The O. Henry Prize Stories, McSweeney's Quarterly Concern, Zyzzyva, Ploughshares, Tin House, and many other places. She lives in Birmingham, Alabama, where she is writing new books and working on opening Thank You Books, a new independent bookstore.
Leidner, Mark: - Mark Leidner's most recent book is the short story collection Under the Sea (Tyrant Books, 2018), called "virtuosic" by the New York Times. He is also the author of two books of poetry, Beauty Was the Case that They Gave Me (Factory Hollow, 2011) and The Angel in the Dream of Our Hangover (Sator, 2011), and the films Jammed (2014) and Empathy, Inc. (2019)
McClanahan, Scott: - Scott McClanahan is the author of The Sarah Book, Crapalachia, and Hill William.
Manguso, Sarah: - Sarah Manguso is the author of seven books, including 300 Arguments, Ongoingness, The Guardians, and The Two Kinds of Decay. She lives in Los Angeles.
Castro, Jordan: - Jordan Castro is the editor of New York Tyrant Magazine. He is the author of two poetry books, and his work has appeared in Tin House, The Iowa Review, New World Writing, and more, as well as has been anthologized in four different countries. He is from Cleveland, OH. Among the authors in this collection, some have won Guggenheim fellowships, the PEN/Malamud award, the Pulitzer prize, the O Henry prize, and one has been a finalist for the National Book Award.
Lin, Tao: - Tao Lin is the author of Trip (2018), Taipei (2013), Richard Yates (2010), Eeeee Eee Eeee (2007), and other books. "Dudu (2007-)" is an excerpt from his novel Leave Society, forthcoming from Vintage. He edits Muumuu House.
Choi, Ryan C. K.: - Ryan C. K. Choi lives in Honolulu, Hawai'i, where he was born and raised.
Clune, Michael W.: - Michael W. Clune's most recent book is Gamelife (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2015). He is the Samuel B. and Virginia C. Knight Professor of Humanities at Case Western Reserve University.

Praise for this book

"Every era has its wise aphorist. Sarah Manguso is ours and joins Marcus Aurelius, Thomas à Kempis, Montaigne." ―Edmund White
"There's no one who writes quite like [Michael W. Clune]." ―The New Republic
"I felt I was reading a writer who would tell harder truths than many other writers, and she turns this nerve against herself to good effect." ―Amy Hempel
"Hodson's essays have such a sexy drama to them―and ultimately it's the romance of just getting through life, the passion that comes from being a wholly alert woman and living to tell about it." ―Miranda July
"Sometimes he sounds like a thriller writer, sometimes an art critic, sometimes a poet." ―Christian Lorentzen, Vulture
"Beattie's complexities make us more alert to the layered complexities of our own lives, and the lives of others." ―Los Angeles Times
"[With] her absolute ear and her masterly deadpan humor, the results are dazzling. Beattie is a natural writer. Her prose never preens or tires or obstructs." ―The New Yorker
"Wild and chiseled, both." ―Maggie Nelson
"McClanahan's prose is miasmic, dizzying, repetitive. A rushing river of words that reflects the chaos and humanity of the place from which he hails. He writes in an elliptical fever dream so contagious that slowing down is not an option. It would be like putting a doorstop in front of a speeding train."―The New York Times
"Beattie's wit [is] truly unsurpassed in our literature." ―The Washington Post
"I steal language and ideas from Michael W. Clune." ―Ben Lerner
Nobody writes like Schutt - Publisher's Weekly
Christine Schutt is already easily among the liveliest stylists of our time, and these eleven stories prove we ain't seen nothing yet. Each is a wonder, pickled in her crystalline idiom and cured under her brutal, astonishing wit." - Claire Vaye Watkins