The Heart Keeps Faulty Time by Siân Griffiths

Description

Clown parents parse their disappointment in their non-clown son and their fears for his future in a nuclear-armed world. A clockwork girl discovers a discarded and disemboweled female body. Aliens, mermaids, and dragons call to us. In ten short stories brimming with captivating imagery, Siân Griffiths, author of Borrowed Horses, spins the familiar on its heels. Unorthodox and lyric, witty and heart-felt, The Heart Keeps Faulty Time bears witness to the struggle to reconcile our visions of ourselves with the reality of our circumstances.

“Siân Griffiths’s characters are most often exceptional people with big feelings and surprising abilities, just like so many of us—and, also like so many of us, they’re frequently disappointed or disappointing, despite their potential grandeur. What does it mean to be a superhero, a mermaid, a dragon’s child, a living nuclear launch code raised by clowns, if this life is all it gets you? The Heart Keeps Faulty Time is frequently hilarious, always moving, surprising and heartfelt.”
—Matt Bell, author of Scrapper

“Siân Griffiths’s The Heart Keeps Faulty Time is a dazzling account of a world coming off its hinges. Each story, illuminated by an unfamiliar sun, ticks like a heart that has wandered off its path. I could follow this heart forever, knowing it will keep me a little afraid and very, very alive. ”
—Sabrina Orah Mark, author of Wild Milk

“In Siân Griffiths’s wonderful collection, girls dance with aliens, clown parents raise dreary children, and dragons are examined, feared, and loved. Perhaps that last is the best description of the collection as a whole; there is fear in equal parts with wonder in each exquisite, beautifully written gem here.”
—Amber Sparks, author of And I Do Not Forgive You

Siân Griffiths

Siân Griffiths serves as Professor of English and teaches creative writing at Weber State University in Ogden, Utah. She holds a BA from the University of Idaho and an MA and PhD from the University of Georgia, where she specialized in fiction writing. Her work has appeared in Colorado Review, Prairie Schooner, The Georgia Review, Indiana Review, American Short Fiction (on line), Cincinnati Review, Ninth Letter, Booth, and many other publications. She is a four-time Pushcart Prize nominee, notable essayist in Best American Essays 2021, and the Tennessee Williams Fiction Scholar at the 2022 Sewanee Writers’ Conference.

Her debut novel, Borrowed Horses (New Rivers Press), was a semi-finalist for the 2014 VCU Cabell First Novelist Award. It tells the story of aspiring Olympian Joannie Edson, who moves back to Idaho with her aging horse when her mother’s MS takes a turn for the worse. Joannie has given up everything (career, romance) to pursue her goal of riding for the US Equestrian Team, but now, with no horse to ride and no money to buy or support a young prospect, she finds herself faced with a choice: should she take a chance on a relationship with an attractive stranger or invest her time in training her coach’s abused and violent mare? As she explores each option, Joannie finds that a fully lived life is much like the jumping courses she’s always ridden, every path bearing obstacles that she will have to clear to find her way forward. The novel was inspired, in part, by Siân’s work with the U.S. Equestrian Team, grief for the loss of her own horse, Killian, and a deep and desperate nostalgia for riding jumpers.

Siân released two new works of fiction in 2020. The ten stories in her short fiction collection The Heart Keeps Faulty Time (Bull City Press) recycle elements from various genres (romance, sci fi, super heroes, etc) to create irreverent, funny, feminist pieces. Her novel Scrapple (Braddock Ave Books) was inspired by her love of family and Philadelphia. In it, Robert Flannigan, newly moved from small town Oregon to Philly, is days away from starting his sophomore year of high school when he finds his older brother’s babies abandoned, a sheet tied over their crib and no word of explanation. With his brother missing, his mother starting a new job, and his twin nephews to look after, Robert has never felt more alone. He quickly befriends Jerome, the ever-smiling nerd from across the street. Together, they navigate substitute parenting, the city bus system, pervasive racism, and their high school’s bullies as they launch a search that will expose them to the secrets that both the city and Robert’s brother hide.

In addition to her novels and collection, her essay collection The Sum of Her Parts was selected for the Crux Series in Creative Nonfiction and is newly published by University of Georgia Press. The Sum of Her Parts explores how women’s body parts and the roles/parts that women play have been deployed toward political ends. Connecting topics as diverse as bra shopping, Wonder Woman, the history of the English language, and a Metallica rockumentary, Griffiths explores what women’s parts mean in contemporary America.

Currently, Siân reads fiction as part of the editorial teams at Barrelhouse. She’s a mother, a mutt-lover, and an avid-if-inept athlete. When not teaching, writing, editing, and parenting, she plays tennis and is working on improving her dressage with her Holsteiner gelding, Larry.