Her Body and Other Parties

Finalist, National Book Awards 2017 for Fiction

Her Body and Other Parties, by Carmen Maria Machado book cover
ISBN 9781555977887
Graywolf Press
Carmen Maria Machado author photo, credit: Tom Storm Photography
Carmen Maria Machado

Carmen Maria Machado’s fiction and nonfiction have appeared in The New YorkerGranta, NPR, GuernicaElectric LiteratureGulf CoastTin House, Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy, The Best Horror of the Year, Year’s Best Weird Fiction, and Best Women’s Erotica. Her short story “The Husband Stitch” was nominated for the Shirley Jackson and Nebula Awards, awarded a Pushcart Prize Special Mention, and longlisted for the James Tiptree, Jr. Literary Award. More about this author >

Award Years

Award Status

Award Categories

Earthy and otherworldly, antic and sexy, queer and caustic, comic and deadly serious, Her Body and Other Parties swings from horrific violence to the most exquisite sentiment. In their explosive originality, these stories enlarge the possibilities of contemporary fiction.

Judges Citation

Carmen Maria Machado’s debut story collection is a thunderclap. Blending the intimate and the fantastical, the most personal revelations with the most speculative of fictions, Machado expands what short fiction can do. Her characters explore sexual desires while fleeing deadly viruses that promise human extinction. They try to control the shapes of their bodies but cannot control the phantom children living in their basements. With gorgeous, muscular language and mordant wit, Machado pulls us into her world—one of corporeal longing and spiritual hunger, a sensual and gothic-tinged alternate reality both dangerous and addictive.

Top
X