DESCRIPTION:
Animal Truth and Other Stories is a collection of eco-fabulist tales in which adventures with fantastic animals and real science lead to metamorphoses of the heart. Familiar legends, from Faust and Oedipus to werewolves and time travel, appear in radically new ways: An artist obsessed with species extinction unwittingly summons a demonic double when he creates a “banquet” featuring a baked mermaid. A brilliant woman studying a rare fish makes a soul-shattering discovery about motherhood. A time-travelling billionaire escapes his modern life only to have his heart broken by a lovely creature in Earth’s remote past.
Each tale in this collection turns into gold the prickling straw of anxieties about our continued life on the planet. By turns playful, terrifying, haunting, and sensuous, these stories inspire wonder at the interwoven lives of human and nonhuman beings.
Sharona Muir‘s debut novel, Invisible Beasts, was praised in O, the Oprah Magazine, as a ‘Title to Pick Up Now,’ and was a finalist for the Orion Prize. She is a recipient of the National Endowment for the Arts fellowship in poetry; the Alfred Hodder fellowship from Princeton University; three Ohio Arts Council Individual Excellence fellowships in fiction, nonfiction and poetry; and other awards. Muir has authored four books including a memoir from Random House/Schocken Books and a first volume of poetry from Harper & Row. Other writing has appeared in The New York Times, Granta, The Paris Review, Kenyon Review, Virginia Quarterly Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, and numerous other periodicals.
Further reading
Read: Menu: Extinction, Granta
Review: forthcoming
Prompt: Begin by making a list of mythical beasts. Write a three line description for each. Then, pick one and begin writing. Go where your imagination takes you.