BRIAN EVENSON reads from his collection of stories A COLLAPSE OF HORSES, in conversation with MAGGIE NELSON

A Collapse of Horses (Coffee House Press)

A stuffed bear’s heart beats with the rhythm of a dead baby, Reno keeps receding to the east no matter how far you drive, and in a mine on another planet, the dust won’t stop seeping in. In these stories, Evenson unsettles us with the everyday and the extraordinary–the terror of living with the knowledge of all we cannot know. Minimalist literary horror, Evenson’s stories work a nightmare axis of doubt, paranoia, and everyday life. 

Praise for Brian Evenson:

“Brian Evenson is one of the treaures of American story writing, a true successor both to the generation of Coover, Barthelme, Hawkes and Co., but also to Edgar Allan Poe.”--Jonathan Lethem

“One of the most provocative, inventive, and talented writers we have working today.”--The Believer

“The bloodfests that sometimes ensue are metaphoric as miniature Francis Bacons. . . [Evenson’s] fiction is repulsive but more ‘moral’ that anything than comes from Bret Ellis or A. M. Homes.”--The Stranger

“There is not a more intense, prolific, or apocalyptic writer of fiction in America than Brian Evenson.”--George Saunders

Praised by Peter Straub for going “furthest out on the sheerest, least sheltered narrativeprecipice,” Brian Evenson has been a finalist for the Edgar Award, the Shirley Jackson Award, and the World Fantasy Award and the winner of the International Horror Guild Award, the American Library Association’s award for Best Horror Novel, and one of Time Out New York’s top books. The recipient of the National Endowment for the Arts fellowship and three O. Henry Prizes, Evenson lives in Providence, Rhode Island, where he directs Brown University’s Literary Arts Program.

Maggie Nelson is the author of The Argonauts, as well as an American poet, art critic, lyric essayist and nonfiction author of books such as The Red Parts: A Memoir, The Art of Cruelty, Bluets, and Jane: A Murder. The Art of Cruelty was a 2011 Notable Book of the Year by the New York Times and recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship in Nonfiction. Jane: A Murderwas a finalist for the PEN/Martha Albrand Award for the Art of the Memoir.

Nelson has taught at the Graduate Writing Program of the New School, Wesleyan University, and the School of Art and Design at Pratt Institute; she currently teaches in the CalArts MFA writing program. She was awarded an Arts Writers grant in 2007 from the Creative Capital/Andy Warhol Foundation. In 2011, she was awarded a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship for Poetry.