Description

A Book Sense Pick:

SKINNY DIPPING IN THE LAKE OF THE DEAD: Stories, by Alan DeNiro "This is a great debut collection of loopy, off-the-wall, and still-somehow-packing-emo tional-weight stories; DeNiro can weld words into some mighty strange configurations."

Crawford Award finalist
Longlisted for the Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award

Skinny Dipping in the Lake of the Dead is Minneapolis-based poet and writer Alan DeNiro's wide-ranging and assured debut fiction collection.

DeNiro's stories have been published in the most forward-looking magazines including Fence, Crowd, One Story, Strange Horizons, and 3rd Bed.

These stories skitter sideways across literary and genre fiction categories, using the toolbox of genres like science fiction and fantasy to grapple with issues of identity, family, gender, and politics. DeNiro is frequently funny, surreal, or slapstick, but his stories also connect with readers on an emotional level, in unexpected and surprising ways. Even in the oddest of DeNiro's stories, his characters are real people grappling with real relationships, real heartbreaks, the small, cruel, pinprick absurdities of a universe which is larger and stranger than most writers ever realize.
--Caleb Wilson, Davis-Kidd Booksellers, Nashville, TN

"Refreshing, imaginative, funny-scary stuff."
-- Ray Olson, Booklist

"Thoughtful, ambitious writing and truly transformative reading."
-- Small Spiral Notebook

"A commitment to experimental structure and oddball elements provides this debut collection's consistency.... The collection argues for DeNiro as a writer to watch."
-- Publishers Weekly
For more information, or to buy the paper edition, go here: http://lcrw.net/deniro/