ISBN: 9780982359440
Short Fictions | 6″x8″, 100 pp | Trade paperback | January 2012
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Praise for The State of Kansas
The State of Kansas is such an amazing book that I was already recommending it to people before I finished reading it. Spallholz utterly nails the way we find and create menace in apparently innocuous or homey things like bricks or piles of dishes or who really owns the cat. Her pithy pointed tales show that we’re all, despite our efforts to play nice, domestic terrorists. This book is awesome.
—Rebecca Brown, author of American Romances, Gifts of the Body, The End of Being Known, The Terrible Girls, Annie Oakley’s Girl, et al
I’m guessing that Lydia Davis and Diane Williams fans will be the most excited, but only because no one is waiting on new Hemingway or Carver, and Spallholz is something like the love child of all four. Don’t ask me how that works, or how Spallholz does what she does, but the end result is an astonishing debut. Indeed the whole genre of short-fictions is getting a major facelift of late, thanks to a proliferation of young and youngish U.S. women writers such as Danielle Dutton, Amelia Gray, Joanna Howard, Alissa Nutting, Joanna Ruocco, Deb Olin Unferth, Lidia Yuknavitch, et al—and now, Julianna Spallholz. I have been welcomed into homes I should not have been welcomed into, writes Spallholz. I have touched things I probably should not have touched. Hell yeah. Lucky us.
—Christian Peet, author of Big American Trip, editor of Tarpaulin Sky
A wonderful, lush read by a drily witty writer….[L]ovely use of language, of repetition, of sing-song-ness…. [A] fable-like quality…. If Lydia Davis knew more people who hung out shirtless in small places and owned pitbulls instead of pedigreed cats, her stories might look at little like Julianna Spallholz’s. Lucky for us, we’ve already got Julianna Spallholz to write those stories.
—Amber Sparks, review at Vouched Books
About Julianna Spallholz
Julianna Spallholz’s short fiction and prose poetry has appeared in Caketrain, Denver Quarterly, NOÖ Weekly, Tarpaulin Sky, both print and audio issues of Gargoyle, and elsewhere. She has collaborated her work with musicians, visual artists, a DJ, and a chef. She currently teaches writing and English in upstate New York and is at work on a second collection of short fictions. The State of Kansas is her debut collection.
Look inside the book!
READINGS & EVENTS
(reverse chronological order)
March 31
GI (General Idea) Reading Series ~ Brickbat Books ~ 709 South 4th Street, Philly, PA. 19147
http://generalideajoint.blogspot.com/
March 7, 7:00 pm
Caffé Lena ~ 47 Phila Street, Saratoga Springs, NY
http://www.caffelena.org/
February 24, 8:00 pm
Yes! Reading Series ~ Albany Social Justice Center ~ 33 Central Ave, Albany, NY
http://yesreading.wordpress.com/
