Congratulations Carmen Maria Machado whose book Her Body and Other Parties (Graywolf Press) has been named a fiction finalist for the 2017 National Book Award!
Machado appeared in Inch #20–Spring 2013 with her flash fiction, “Dating Men with Biblical Names.” Since that time, she has been a reader for Inch submissions and Inch has reflected her invaluable contributions.
Her Body and Other Parties (Graywolf Press) was published this year and has been immediately met with wide praise:
“Carmen Maria Machado has managed to have readers, critics and everyone in-between sitting on the edge of their seats for the chance to read her debut story collection. . . . Part science fiction, part fantasy and all fun, Machado’s stories deal with the sometimes unbelievable reality of being a woman in a way you won’t see coming; in a way that is entirely her own.”—NBC “Today Show”
“[Her Body and Other Parties is] written in prose so textured that you want to rub her phrases between your fingertips. . . . A muscular strain of feminism runs through this book, whose contemplation of the female body is bound up in sex, power, pleasure, pain, and the fitful struggle against self-loathing. Rarely is a writer as skilled as Machado at evoking corporeality: the myriad sensations of inhabiting flesh and bone, with all its messiness and ecstasies. . . . [Machado] blend[s] disparate, jostling elements to achieve a ferocious alchemy.”—The Boston Globe
“[Her Body and Other Parties] is that hallowed thing: an example of almost preposterous talent that also encapsulates something vital but previously diffuse about the moment. . . . Machado is a master of such pointed formal play, of queering genre and the supposed laws of reality to present alternative possibilities. . . . Machado reveals just how original, subversive, proud and joyful it can be to write from deep in the gut, even — especially — if the gut has been bruised.”—Los Angeles Times
Carmen Maria Machado is a fiction writer, critic, and essayist whose work has appeared in The New Yorker, The American Reader, Tin House‘s Open Bar, Five Chapters, PANK, Salon, VICE, T