Published in 2021
208 pages
Born in 1988 in Northern California, Kathleen Alcott is the author of the novels Infinite Home and The Dangers of Proximal Alphabets. Her short fiction, criticism, memoir, and food writing have appeared in outlets including The New York Times, The Guardian, The New Yorker Online, The Los Angeles Review of Books, ZYZZYVA, Tin House, The Bennington Review, and The Coffin Factory.
In 2017, her short story “Reputation Management” was shortlisted for the prestigious Sunday Times Short Story Award. Her short story “Saturation” was listed as notable by The Best American Short Fiction of 2014, and her most recent novel was a Kirkus Prize nominee.
She lives in New York City, where she has taught at Columbia University, The Center for Fiction and Catapult Fiction.
What is this book about?
A woman finds a photograph of her deceased mother in a compromising position on the wall of an art museum. A divorcee decamps to a place where nobody knows her name but can’t escape the watchful eye of the world she’s slipped away from. A transplant to a new city must make a choice about whom she trusts when her partner reveals a fundamental truth about himself.
For readers of explosive stories by Lauren Groff, Joy Williams, and Deborah Eisenberg, Emergency presents seven radically intimate, masterfully executed excavations of the unfreedoms of American life and the guilt that stalks those who survive them. Grappling with poverty and addiction, class ascension and sexual power, the women in these stories try to pay down the psychic debts of their old lives as they search for a new happiness they can afford.
