Description
Daring, witty, and strange, the twelve stories in Large Animals confront what it means to have a body. Jess Arndt's often-unnamed narrators battle with inhabiting a form that makes them feel both deeply uncomfortable and detached, constantly challenging the limits of gender and reality as they try to connect with other people and with themselves. These are stories that rebel against accepted ideas of human identity and present a new normal that is as ambiguous as it is messy. In 'Moon Colonies' the narrator's disconnect with their body leads them on a masochistic gambling spree. In 'Jeff', Lily Tomlin mistakes Jess for Jeff, triggering a hilarious and unhinged identity crisis. And in 'Contrails', a character calls each of their ex lovers the night before surgery, confronting a gut-twisting fear of becoming non-existent. Soupy, visceral, and often disconcerting, Large Animals sets a new standard for language, challenging our concepts of gender and body in a way that feels radical, insightful, and incredibly relevant.
About the Author
Jess Arndt's debut story collection, Large Animals, was shortlisted for the California Book Prize and long listed for The Story Prize. Their writing has recently appeared in The LA Review of Books, THEM, Lithub, Hazzlitt, Fence, BOMB, Night Papers, and in collaborations with Swedish band, The Knife, and was included in Liberating the Canon: An Anthology of Innovative Literature (Dostoyevsky Wannabe, 2018). Arndt received an MFA at Bard College and is the recipient of a Graywolf SLS Fellowship, a Fiction Fellowship at the New York Foundation of the Arts, and an Arctic Circle Residency (Fiction). She/they are a co-founder of the prose experiment, New Herring Press, and live in Los Angeles/WA State.
Reviews
"...joins in with the classics of loaded, outlaw literature... this is an electric debut." Maggie Nelson; "Everything in Jess Arndt's Large Animals veers towards the supernatural. Everything is strangely bodily and shape-shifting. Hugely original, this debut is wild." - Isabel Waidner; "Jess Arndt has crafted a queer uncanny, an eerily recognizable landscape of dark magic and darker humor where the instability of bodies, desire, relationships, and the self take on a supernatural dimension. A tremendously exciting collection." - Michelle Tea; "Jess Arndt is like a queer Kafka''- Ingrid Contreras, New York Times editor's choice author of Fruit of the Drunken Tree. "Each time I pick up a book, this is the voice I'm hoping to hear. Honest, agitating, queer, visionary. Arndt refuses binaries, haunting the space between. The pleasure of Large Animals is in the bite." - Justin Torres, author of We the Animals "Strange, smart, and probing... an important voice on timely questions of the body politic." - Elle "Arndt's vivid, rollicking stories represent a new kind of American outlaw literature, of transgression and nonconformity and queerness and heart, all told in a propulsive, original voice." - Literary Hub "Metamorphosis of time, of space, of character is exposed in every playful sentence of Large Animals. Language will not be kept in its form. Life, poetry, gender are always in the process of transformation, and this fundamental condition is at the heart of Jess Arndt's stories. Large Animals is a strange and beautiful must-read." - Dorthe Nors, author of Karate Chop and So Much for That Winter "Jess Arndt's writing is so strange and imaginative that it provides release from the real world." - The Cut "Arndt tells stories that resemble handfuls of ribbons vibrant, overlapping, tangled, seemingly more middles than beginnings and endings. . . . Arndt's keen, wild stories are truly original, and readers will hope for more." - Booklist "Arndt's short stories are delicious flights of fancy, or obsession, or fertile curiosity or, more accurately, some beguiling combination of all three...This is a playful and provocative collection, full of sly, deft turns of phrase and striking imagery." - Publishers Weekly "[A] bold new literary voice, borderless and brave." - O, The Oprah Magazine "Reading Arndt is like walking toward a shimmering desert mirage and being met with a cloud of acid instead of an oasis of cool water... A deeply transgressive, riveting shot out of the gate. Arndt is one to watch." - Kirkus Reviews
Book Information
ISBN 9781916355309
Author Jess Arndt
Format Paperback
Page Count 176
Imprint Cipher Press
Publisher Cipher Press
About the Author
Jess Arndt's debut story collection, Large Animals, was shortlisted for the California Book Prize and long listed for The Story Prize. Their writing has recently appeared in The LA Review of Books, THEM, Lithub, Hazzlitt, Fence, BOMB, Night Papers, and in collaborations with Swedish band, The Knife, and was included in Liberating the Canon: An Anthology of Innovative Literature (Dostoyevsky Wannabe, 2018). Arndt received an MFA at Bard College and is the recipient of a Graywolf SLS Fellowship, a Fiction Fellowship at the New York Foundation of the Arts, and an Arctic Circle Residency (Fiction). She/they are a co-founder of the prose experiment, New Herring Press, and live in Los Angeles/WA State.
Reviews
"...joins in with the classics of loaded, outlaw literature... this is an electric debut." Maggie Nelson; "Everything in Jess Arndt's Large Animals veers towards the supernatural. Everything is strangely bodily and shape-shifting. Hugely original, this debut is wild." - Isabel Waidner; "Jess Arndt has crafted a queer uncanny, an eerily recognizable landscape of dark magic and darker humor where the instability of bodies, desire, relationships, and the self take on a supernatural dimension. A tremendously exciting collection." - Michelle Tea; "Jess Arndt is like a queer Kafka''- Ingrid Contreras, New York Times editor's choice author of Fruit of the Drunken Tree. "Each time I pick up a book, this is the voice I'm hoping to hear. Honest, agitating, queer, visionary. Arndt refuses binaries, haunting the space between. The pleasure of Large Animals is in the bite." - Justin Torres, author of We the Animals "Strange, smart, and probing... an important voice on timely questions of the body politic." - Elle "Arndt's vivid, rollicking stories represent a new kind of American outlaw literature, of transgression and nonconformity and queerness and heart, all told in a propulsive, original voice." - Literary Hub "Metamorphosis of time, of space, of character is exposed in every playful sentence of Large Animals. Language will not be kept in its form. Life, poetry, gender are always in the process of transformation, and this fundamental condition is at the heart of Jess Arndt's stories. Large Animals is a strange and beautiful must-read." - Dorthe Nors, author of Karate Chop and So Much for That Winter "Jess Arndt's writing is so strange and imaginative that it provides release from the real world." - The Cut "Arndt tells stories that resemble handfuls of ribbons vibrant, overlapping, tangled, seemingly more middles than beginnings and endings. . . . Arndt's keen, wild stories are truly original, and readers will hope for more." - Booklist "Arndt's short stories are delicious flights of fancy, or obsession, or fertile curiosity or, more accurately, some beguiling combination of all three...This is a playful and provocative collection, full of sly, deft turns of phrase and striking imagery." - Publishers Weekly "[A] bold new literary voice, borderless and brave." - O, The Oprah Magazine "Reading Arndt is like walking toward a shimmering desert mirage and being met with a cloud of acid instead of an oasis of cool water... A deeply transgressive, riveting shot out of the gate. Arndt is one to watch." - Kirkus Reviews
Book Information
ISBN 9781916355309
Author Jess Arndt
Format Paperback
Page Count 176
Imprint Cipher Press
Publisher Cipher Press
