2023 Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction
A richly detailed, brilliantly woven debut collection about the lives and lore of one Black family
Shannon Sanders’s sparkling debut brings us into the company of the Collins family and their acquaintances as they meet, bicker, compete, celebrate, worry, keep and reveal secrets, build lives and careers, and endure. Moving from Atlantic City to New York to DC, from the 1960s to the 2000s, from law students to drag performers to violinists to matriarchs, Company tells a multifaceted, multigenerational saga in thirteen stories.
Each piece in Company includes a moment when a guest arrives at someone�����s home. In “The Good, Good Men,” two brothers reunite to oust a “deadbeat” boyfriend from their mother’s house. In ���The Everest Society,” the brothers’ sister anxiously prepares for a home visit from a social worker before adopting a child. In “Birds of Paradise,” their aunt, newly promoted to university provost, navigates a minefield of microaggressions at her own welcome party. And in the haunting title story, the provost’s sister finds her solitary life disrupted when her late sister’s daughter comes calling.
These are stories about intimacy, societal and familial obligations, and the ways inheritances shape our fates. Buoyant, somber, sharp, and affectionate, this collection announces a remarkable new voice in fiction.
Genre: Literary Fiction
Shannon Sanders’s sparkling debut brings us into the company of the Collins family and their acquaintances as they meet, bicker, compete, celebrate, worry, keep and reveal secrets, build lives and careers, and endure. Moving from Atlantic City to New York to DC, from the 1960s to the 2000s, from law students to drag performers to violinists to matriarchs, Company tells a multifaceted, multigenerational saga in thirteen stories.
Each piece in Company includes a moment when a guest arrives at someone�����s home. In “The Good, Good Men,” two brothers reunite to oust a “deadbeat” boyfriend from their mother’s house. In ���The Everest Society,” the brothers’ sister anxiously prepares for a home visit from a social worker before adopting a child. In “Birds of Paradise,” their aunt, newly promoted to university provost, navigates a minefield of microaggressions at her own welcome party. And in the haunting title story, the provost’s sister finds her solitary life disrupted when her late sister’s daughter comes calling.
These are stories about intimacy, societal and familial obligations, and the ways inheritances shape our fates. Buoyant, somber, sharp, and affectionate, this collection announces a remarkable new voice in fiction.
Genre: Literary Fiction
Praise for this book
"If love is a many-splendored thing, family love is a little more complex: sometimes spluttery, sometimes splintering, often served up with a side of spleen. The extended clan Shannon Sanders conjures in Company is fully alive-and very funny!-recognizable but wholly new, and to read their stories is to get the gift you don't always get from your own family: the feeling of being seen." - Will Allison
"Company introduces an unforgettable cast of characters who remind us that family can be both wound and salve. Sanders offers sharp and original insight into the intimate politics of race and class and the impossible rules we've inherited to navigate them. This is a brilliant and immaculate debut." - Danielle Evans
"Assured and incisive, this collection hums with the dark comedy of striving and speaks the inconvenient necessity of affiliation as it unravels the complications of belonging. This clear-eyed debut brims human." - Tracy O'Neill
"Shannon Sanders's stories simply blew me away. The Collins family and the many folks in their orbit are endlessly fascinating, frustrating, and fun to meet on the page. Company is a riotous, dazzling debut that is as profound as it is entertaining." - Deesha Philyaw
"Company is a story collection that eats like a novel. Each story feels like a completely different vision of the same majestically sprawling family, as these neurotic high achievers struggle to balance the duties of kinship, social appearances, and honesty to their true selves. Reading Shannon Sanders makes me want to visit home." - Tony Tulathimutte
"Company introduces an unforgettable cast of characters who remind us that family can be both wound and salve. Sanders offers sharp and original insight into the intimate politics of race and class and the impossible rules we've inherited to navigate them. This is a brilliant and immaculate debut." - Danielle Evans
"Assured and incisive, this collection hums with the dark comedy of striving and speaks the inconvenient necessity of affiliation as it unravels the complications of belonging. This clear-eyed debut brims human." - Tracy O'Neill
"Shannon Sanders's stories simply blew me away. The Collins family and the many folks in their orbit are endlessly fascinating, frustrating, and fun to meet on the page. Company is a riotous, dazzling debut that is as profound as it is entertaining." - Deesha Philyaw
"Company is a story collection that eats like a novel. Each story feels like a completely different vision of the same majestically sprawling family, as these neurotic high achievers struggle to balance the duties of kinship, social appearances, and honesty to their true selves. Reading Shannon Sanders makes me want to visit home." - Tony Tulathimutte
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