Ander Monson will join us LIVE on on Wednesday, April 22 at 12:30 p.m. PT.
Buy the book: The Gnome Stories: Stories
Read Alta Asks: Talking with Ander Monson
About the book and the author
The Gnome Stories focuses on characters who are loners in the truest sense; who are in the process of recovering from mental, physical, or emotional trauma; and who find solace―or at least a sense of purpose―in peculiar jobs and pursuits. A man whose wife has left him is robbed, so he decides to start doing his own breaking and entering, into his neighbors’ homes. When another man’s girlfriend is cryogenically frozen by her family after a car accident, he becomes a maintenance worker at the cryogenic facility, eavesdropping on visitors as they whisper secrets to their frozen loved ones. A woman serves as an assistant to the Starvationist, whose methods to help clients lose large amounts of weight are unorthodox, sadistic―and utterly failproof. Another woman and her robot assistant have been hired to tinker with the troubling memories inside a celebrity’s brain.
Ander Monson is the author of eight books: four of nonfiction (Neck Deep and Other Predicaments, Vanishing Point, Letter to a Future Lover, and I Will Take the Answer), two poetry collections (Vacationland and The Available World), and two books of fiction (Other Electricities and The Gnome Stories). A finalist for the New York Public Library Young Lions Award (for Other Electricities) and a National Book Critics Circle in criticism (for Vanishing Point ), he is also a recipient of a number of other prizes: a Howard Foundation Fellowship, the Graywolf Press Nonfiction Prize, the Annie Dillard Award for Nonfiction, the Great Lakes Colleges New Writers Award in Nonfiction, and a Guggenheim Fellowship. He edits the magazine DIAGRAM, the New Michigan Press, Essay Daily, and a series of yearly literary/music tournaments: March Sadness (2016), March Fadness (2017), March Shredness (2018), March Vladness (2019), and March Badness (2020).
View the Alta Asks Live archive.
About the moderator
Heather Scott Partington is a writer, teacher, and book critic. She is the winner of an emerging critic fellowship from the National Book Critics Circle and the critic in residence for UC Riverside’s Palm Desert MFA program. Her writing has appeared in the New York Times Book Review, Washington Post, USA Today, Los Angeles Times, and Los Angeles Review of Booksamong other publications. She lives in Elk Grove, California, with her husband and two kids.
