As its author, In the Event of Contact keeps delivering surprises, and most are the best kind, largely around who the book is reaching and who’s supporting it. I’ve long admired and applauded Literary Hub, a robust site devoted to all things books. Daily, alongside original content and exclusive excerpts, LitHub showcases contemporary literary culture, and does so with enormous generosity, intelligence, and finesse. I’m thrilled that today LitHub featured an except from my short story collection’s titular story “In the Event of Contact.”
An earlier, unpublished version of the story was longlisted for the 2017 Sunday Times EFG Short Story Award and I remain deeply grateful for that huge nod, which boosted my belief in the short story and allowed me to revise it with vigor, and with my imagining the story one day going on to reach readers. Here we are; that vision achieved, along with my dream goal of seeing my fiction included on LitHub. It’s as though, along with creating the stories in this collection, I was also conjuring a story about the book, and myself, and it’s coming true.
