Big Bad (Mary McCarthy Prize in Short Fiction)

Whitney Collins

$16.95

Publication Date: March 16th, 2021

Publisher:

Sarabande Books

ISBN:

9781946448729

Pages:

224

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Description

Within the thirteen stories of Whitney Collins's Big Bad dwells a hunger that's dark, deep, and hilarious. Part domestic horror, part flyover gothic, Big Bad serves up real-world predicaments in unremarkable places (motels, dormitories, tiki bars), all with Collins's heart-wrenching flavor of magical realism. A young woman must give birth to future iterations of herself; a widower kills a horse en route to his grandson's circumcision; a conflicted summer camper is haunted by a glass eye and motorcycle crash. Collins's cast of characters must repeatedly choose to fight or flee the "big bad" that dwells within us all. Winner of the Mary McCarthy Prize in Short Fiction, and boasting a 2020 Pushcart-winning story, Big Bad simultaneously entertains and disconcerts.

About the Author

Whitney Collins's fiction has appeared in Ninth Letter, The Southeast Review, Grist, The Pinch, Moon City Review, Quarter After Eight, The Laurel Review, Lumina, and Raleigh Review, among others. She is the recipient of a 2020 Pushcart Prize, a semifinalist for American Short Fiction's 2019 The Short(er) Fiction Prize, and her flash horror is forthcoming in Catapult's Tiny Nightmares anthology. Big Bad was the 2019 winner of Sarabande Books's Mary McCarthy Prize in Short Fiction. Collins lives in Kentucky with her husband and two sons.