Diane Cook is the author of the novel, THE NEW WILDERNESS, which was longlisted for the 2020 Booker Prize, and the story collection, MAN V. NATURE, which was a finalist for the Guardian First Book Award, the Believer Book Award, The Pen/Hemingway Award, and the Los Angeles Times Award for First Fiction. Her writing has appeared in Harper’s, Tin House, Granta, and other publications, and her stories have been included in the anthologies Best American Short Stories and The O. Henry Prize Stories. She is a former producer for the radio program This American Life, and was the recipient of a 2016 fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. She lives in Brooklyn, NY with her husband, daughter and son.
Ghostroots (2024) 'Pemi Aguda "Here you'll find breathtaking stories of the familiar and the strange, full of empathy for characters trying to bridge chasms between communities, families, generations, and their ghosts. 'Pemi Aguda builds worlds with blade-like acuity. You'll be caught in their sway and transported."
The Alternatives (2024) Caoilinn Hughes "Hughes's elegiac romp into our collective crises erupts in gorgeous language and sizzles with wit, yet is undergirded by pathos. A shapeshifter of a writer, she can draw any character, any foible with crystalline precision."
Hot Springs Drive (2023) Lindsay Hunter "Hot Springs Drive is a sneak attack. It has everything you could want in a book, delivered when you least expect it. Truly ugly and beautiful humanity. Electrifying chemistry in heartbreaking places. Hope when it seems all hope is lost. And mystery that goes way beyond a simple whodunnit. I'm in awe of the lives that Hunter has conjured in these pages. I mourn their lost innocence, and I ache for them now that I've reached the last page. The only balm is to read it again."
Terrace Story (2023) Hilary Leichter "Truly brilliant and profound. There's magic between these covers. Leichter is the master of creating a mood and a world that is both breezy and earth-shattering. I felt changed by this book. Every page is revelatory and left me happily breathless, and the story broke my heart in the best way. I thank the literary heavens for Terrace Story."
Mobility (2023) Lydia Kiesling "Utterly absorbing and revelatory about the small, personal parts we play in a world we cannot comprehend. Mobility is a meticulously built stage for Kiesling's perfectly drawn, wonderfully flawed characters to stumble across. I always see parts of myself in the pages of Kiesling's books - the lesser angels I'm eager to hide away - and I feel less alone because of it."
Open Throat (2023) Henry Hoke "Wholly original, inventive, and surprising on every level. Open Throat affirms the capaciousness of the novel as a form. I wish more books took the kinds of chances Open Throat does."
The School for Good Mothers (2021) Jessamine Chan "The School for Good Mothers is an astonishing novel. Heartbreaking and daring, propulsive and wise. In the way that The Handmaid's Tale made us fear for women's bodies, The School for Good Mothers makes us fear for women's souls. It's hard to distill all the love and longing this book contains, and how electrifying it is to be immersed in Chan's world. So let me just say, I read with my heart in my throat and I held my kids tight."
In the Event of Contact (2021) Ethel Rohan "Spare, haunting, and mesmerizing, the stories in In the Event of Contact somehow capture the ungraspable essence of being human. This book, these characters, put a spell on me."
Life Events (2020) Karolina Waclawiak "Life Events is a masterwork on grief and loss, living and dying, feeling trapped and becoming free. This transcendent novel braided the numbness and the hope of everyday living into a lifeline that pulled me along through each mesmerizing chapter. If you've ever wanted to escape, this stunning book is for you. If you stayed because you knew there could be more, it's also for you."
Thin Girls (2020) Diana Clarke "Thin Girls is a sharp, cutting debut, ostensibly about the traps of anorexia and body dysmorphia. But its true concern is with the trappings of being a woman. Full of dry dark wit, the world Clarke has created would almost feel absurdist if it weren’t so dangerously real. This book made me feel so much: fear, dread, the flush of young love, the joy in small things, hope. Thin Girls holds it all between its covers."
