Third Place Books presents Shruti Swamy, in conversation with Angela Garbes

Shruti Swamy, in conversation with Angela Garbes - A House is a Body

Monday, August 17, 2020 - 7:00pm

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"Swamy's A House Is a Body will not simply be talked about as one of the greatest short story collections of the 2020s; it will change the way all stories -- short and long -- are told, written, and consumed. There is nothing, no emotion, no tiny morsel of memory, no touch, that this book does not take seriously. Yet, A House Is a Body might be the most fun I've ever had in a short story collection." --Kiese Laymon, author of Heavy

Dreams collide with reality, modernity with antiquity, and myth with identity in the twelve arresting stories of A House Is a Body. In "Earthly Pleasures," a young painter living alone in San Francisco begins a secret romance with one of India's biggest celebrities, and desire and ego are laid bare. 

In "A Simple Composition," a husband's professional crisis leads to his wife's discovery of a dark, ecstatic joy. And in the title story, an exhausted mother watches, hypnotized by fear, as a California wildfire approaches her home. 

Immersive and assured, provocative and probing, these are stories written with the edge and precision of a knife blade. Set in the United States and India, they reveal small but intense moments of beauty, pain, and power that contain the world. A House Is a Body introduces a bold and original voice in fiction, from a writer at the start of a stellar career.

The winner of two O. Henry Awards, Shruti Swamy's work has appeared in The Paris Review, McSweeney’s, Prairie Schooner, and elsewhere. In 2012, she was Vassar College's 50th W.K. Rose Fellow, and has been awarded residencies at the Millay Colony for the Arts, Blue Mountain Center, and Hedgebrook. She is a Kundiman fiction fellow, a 2017 – 2018 Steinbeck Fellow at San Jose State University, and a recipient of a 2018 grant from the Elizabeth George Foundation. She lives in San Francisco.

Angela Garbes is the author of Like a Mother, an NPR Best Book of 2018 and finalist for the Washington State Book Award in Nonfiction. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, The Cut, and featured on NPR's Fresh Air. She lives in Seattle.

A House Is a Body: Stories (Hardcover)
By Shruti Swamy
$25.95
ISBN: 9781616209896
Availability: On our shelves now at one or more of our stores
Published: Algonquin Books - August 11th, 2020

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