Assorted Fire Events Stories [Paperback]

David Meanswas born and raised in Michigan. His second collection of stories,Assorted Fire Events, earned theLos Angles TimesBook Prize for fiction and a National Book Critics Circle nomination. His third book,The Secret Goldfish, received widespread critical acclaim and was shortlisted for the Frank O'Connor International Short Story Prize. His fourth book,The Spot, was selected as a 2010 Notable Book byThe New York Times, and won an O. Henry Prize. His books have been translated into eight languages, and his fiction has appearedThe New Yorker,Harper's Magazine,Esquire,Zoetrope,The Best American Short Stories,The Best American Mystery Stories,The O. Henry Prize Stories, and numerous other publications. He lives in Nyack, New York, and teaches at Vassar College.

Assorted Fire Eventsis one of the best American collections of the last ten years. Means's stories are harrowing and funny and full-blooded, consistently satisfying in their narrative twists, and lyrical in a way that makes most contemporary literary lyricism' sound like greeting cards. This is food for the hungry. Jonathan Franzen, author of Freedom

The roll-call of honor, from Eudora Welty to John Cheever, John Updike, William Maxwell, to Richard Ford, Tobias Wolff, and Annie Proulx, is long and rich. Just when it seems that things could get no better, along comes David Means. Eileen Batersby, The Irish Times

It is Means's signature talent to view the lives of his characters, and life itself, from somewhere just beyond, in a position of maximum l£‹