Author(s): Diane Williams

Short Stories

'The writer who saved my life - or my soul.' Merve Emre, The New Yorker

'A true living hero of the American avant-garde.' Jonathan Franzen

'One of the very few contemporary prose writers who seem to be doing something independent, energetic, heartfelt.' Lydia Davis

A new collection of stories from the 'godmother of flash fiction' (The Paris Review).

In Williams's stories, life is newly alive and dangerous; whether she is writing about an affair, a request for money, an afternoon in a garden, or the simple act of carrying a cake from one room to the next, she offers us beautiful and unsettling new ways of seeing everyday life.
In perfectly honed sentences, with a sly and occasionally wild wit, Williams shows us how any moment of any day can open onto disappointment, pleasure, and possibility.

Praise for How High? - That High-'Williams is a magician of the miniature ... Don't let their diminutive stature fool you- These pieces pack a punch. Brief, elliptical, steeped in longing - or is that lust? - they offer slices of life that rely on interior more than exterior details, which is to say they are small road maps of the soul ... All the pieces here ... are rigorous in both language and emotion, using nuance and inference to explore the implications, the contradictions, that people rarely share aloud ... Williams'a small gems are as dense and beautiful as diamonds, compressed from the carbon of daily life.'-Kirkus Reviews

Praise for The Collected Stories of Diane Williams- 'Erudite, elegant and stubbornly experimental. For any writer, an omnibus collection is a triumph. To see years of Ms Williams's confounding fictions collected in so hefty a volume is like seeing snowflakes accrue into an avalanche.'-Rumaan Alam, The New York Times

Praise for The Collected Stories of Diane Williams- 'Full of funny, libidinal and invigorating enigmas ... Readers who love the arresting phrase, the surprising word, will gravitate to her ... It's perfect to leave on the bedside table, to be consulted before one's dreamlife begins.'-Ange Mlinko, The London Review of Books