Pamela Painter

A crowning collection from the award-winning short story writer Pamela Painter.Pamela Painter's short stories have been praised by Margot Livesey for their "wicked intelligence and ruthless humor." In Fabrications, which brings together 7 new and 24 selected stories, characters struggle to avoid the chaos in their lives, but—driven by addictions and appetites—often bring on disaster. Nobody is ordinary in Painter's stories. A burglar can't believe what he is asked to do by the woman whose jewelry he is stealing. Hitchhikers, hell-bent on murder, are thwarted by the miracle of story-telling. A wife can make rooms—and her husband—disappear, but saves the family dog. A young woman insists on the romance of being married in an Elvis Presley chapel, but for the wrong reasons. Fabrications is a testament to Painter's lyric skill and psychological insight across her career.Praise for Previous Books by Pamela Painter "These wonderful stories—about dogs and housewives, scholars and teenagers—vividly demonstrate Painter's wicked intelligence and ruthless humor and her utterly democratic interest in all our faults and foibles. . . . [A] quirky, sexy, irresistible collection."—Margot Livesey "Pamela Painter's stories are warm, wise, funny, and ultimately true to the way we live now—trying to carry on in the face of things breaking down around us. Reading each story is a thrill—for the full-blown lives, astute details, exact metaphors, and pitch-perfect dialogue. She's like a carpenter—nailing it, again and again."—Bobbie Ann Mason"This is fiction of immense beauty, full of wisdom and informed by rare grace."—Steve Yarbrough

Clare and her oldest friend from college had been planning this visit for the past three months. But only yesterday, her arms full of towels and pillows, Clare realized that it was too soon for her husband's study to become a guest room. First she needed to talk through her anguish and anger at finding him there, slumped over his desk beside the empty vials of pills, finding his folded note that said "Clare." A widower finds his stolen car and begins a relationship with the thief; a woman whose sisters levy accusations against their dying father wonders why he chose them, not her; a divorcing couple celebrates a final beach weekend with their closest friends.In fifteen stories of loss and recovery, including two Pushcart Prize winners, Pamela Painter cements her status as a master of the contemporary story.Pamela Painter is the author of three story collections, Wouldn't You Like to Know, Getting to Know the Weather, which won the GLCA Award for First Fiction, and The Long and Short of It. She is the co-author of What If? Writing Exercises for Fiction Writers. Her stories have appeared in The Atlantic, Harper's, Kenyon Review, Mid-American Review, Ploughshares, Quick Fiction, and in numerous anthologies, such as Sudden Fiction, Flash Fiction, Flash Fiction Forward and MicroFiction. She has won three Pushcart Prizes and Agni Review's John Cheever Award for Fiction. Painter lives in Boston and teaches in the writing, literature and publishing program at Emerson College.