Carmen Maria Machado's work has appeared in Granta, The New Yorker, NPR, Electric Literature, and elsewhere. She has been nominated for a Nebula Award and a Shirley Jackson Award, and was a finalist for the Calvino Prize. She lives in Philadelphia.
"Her Body and Other Parties, by Carmen Maria Machado, is
a love letter to an obstinate genre that won't be gentrified. It's
a wild thing, this book, covered in sequins and scales, blazing
with the influence of fabulists from Angela Carter to Kelly Link
and Helen Oyeyemi, and borrowing from science fiction, queer theory
and horror. . . . Not since Karen Russell's St. Lucy's Home for
Girls Raised by Wolves, in 2006, has a debut collection of
short stories from a relatively unknown author garnered such
attention, or deserved it more."--Parul Sehgal, The New York
Times "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 "[Machado's] use of a vivid experimental lens to show
women struggling for agency is startling."--The New Yorker
"An abrupt, original, and wild collection of stories, full of
outlandish myths that somehow catch at familiar, unspoken truths
about being women in the world that more straightforward or realist
writing wouldn't."--NPR.org "[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 "[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 "The book abounds with
fantastical premises that ring true because the intensity of sexual
desire, the mutability of the body, and the realities of gender
inequality make them so. . . . These stories stand as exquisitely
rendered, poignant hauntings."--San Francisco Chronicle
"Cross-pollenating fairy tales, horror movies, TV shows, and a
terrific sense of humor, [Machado's] work reminds me at different
times of such wildly divergent figures as David Lynch, Jane
Campion, Maggie Nelson, and Grace Paley; which is a way of saying,
Machado sounds like nobody but herself. . . . [An] imaginative and
enjoyable collection, which charts dark territory with enormous
style, wit, and storytelling panache."--John Powers, NPR "Fresh
Air" "Her Body and Other Parties is an astonishing debut, dark
and glittering, like a night, or a knife. The stories in this book
unroll like millipedes, smooth shells of lyric giving way to sharp
joints and flailing, alien limbs."--Bookforum "Machado's
stories . . . have reverberated among readers with the prophetic
force of a soothsayer's divinations."--Vulture "Imaginative,
unsettling, haunting stories."--BuzzFeed "With supernatural
flair, an engaging pop culture awareness . . . and an intimate,
unrelenting style that grabs you by the throat and sinks its
perfectly-polished nails in, Machado explores 'femaleness' in a way
that makes women who evaporate or telepathically hear the thoughts
of porn stars feel eerily, impossibly, like long-lost
friends."--Harper's Bazaar "In her twistedly original and
thrilling debut short story collection, Her Body and Other Parties,
Carmen Maria Machado blends both the terrifying and the horrible
into a psychologically realistic and darkly comic mixture. . . .
Simultaneously hot and chilling, these stories leave the reader
enthralled and shaken."--Chicago Tribune "Thrilling and
page-turning, smart and fearless, and very likely the best book of
the year."--Jezebel "Machado brushes past taboo to treat
women's sexuality with frankness and lyricism. . . . These daring
stories are deeply feminist, but never dogmatically so, slipping
into the murky places where we begin to fear our desires and desire
what we fear."--Slate "Between its covers, we find ourselves
inside a gorgeously warped reflection of the world in which we
actually live. It's recognizable as our own, but everything is a
little more lurid, a little more queer, a little more violent, a
little more magical than what we're used to."--Nylon "It's
rare to discover an author who can catalyze a reader's laughter and
fear in mere pages, but Machado succeeds again and again, placing
herself alongside names like Angela Carter, Kelly Link, Helen
Oyeyemi and Karen Russell when it comes to genre-bending fiction
with a dark bent. . . . This gloriously engaging and utterly queer
collection is necessary reading."--Paste "With her first book
Machado has already emerged a master of several beloved genres. . .
. Her work could be placed in conversation with a host of fiction
writers who inscribe the walls of such stories with fairy-tale
magic--Angela Carter, Kelly Link, Alexandra Kleeman, Aimee Bender,
and Lesley Nneka Arimah come to mind. But there are stories here
too that possess a courageous and indelible
originality."--The Village Voice "With Machado, everything
feels razed and built anew. . . . [Her Body and Other
Parties] feels determined to live well beyond annual
prize-giving cycles, to become that classic misfit survivor that
readers and writers keep returning to."--Star Tribune
(Minneapolis) "Machado's writing is full of repressed physical
energy and the raw juice of annihilating female fury. The body is
the subject, the culprit, the innocent. Standard accessories like
ribbons become frightful. She does unimaginable things with a prom
dress. But these stories are also funny--which really made me
uneasy--because I could hear in my laugh that same squawk a tiny
dog makes in moments of duress."--Louise Erdrich, The
Millions "Her success comes not just from the strength of her
voice, but from the idea that by recentering classic genre stories
on the women who haunt their edges, and diving deep into their
subconscious, territory still ripe for exploration will open
up."--Vox "The stories in this book are of the finest
quality: sexy and threatening, strange and
playful."--Literary Hub "Her Body and Other Parties
is a masterful assemblage of tales that is at once luminous and
dingy, sexy and terrifying, queer and mundane. These wondrous
stories remind readers not only that the lives of women are full of
paradoxes and contradictions, but that fiction as an endeavor is
especially powerful when it takes as its task the examination of
these ambiguities."--The Rumpus "Machado's first collection
of short fiction is finally here for all to enjoy and marvel at. .
. . Surreal and subversive, this debut standsout no matter the
company."--W Magazine "A refreshing--and
provocative--read."--The Nation "She writes with a sincerity
I didn't realize I was missing until I found it in these pages;
it's rare to encounter an articulation of feminist themes that
isn't self-conscious of them. . . . Machado's work, like her
characters, is accessible and nuanced, textured without being
overwrought."--Lauren Kane, The Paris Review Staff
Picks "Carmen Maria Machado is an Angela Carter for 2017: Both
of them have a distinctively gothic, bloody, dark fairy tale
sensibility, but unlike Carter, Machado is overtly queer, feminist,
and body-positive. What's most striking about Machado's [Her Body
and Other Parties] . . . is how insistently her women are embodied,
and how clearly their oppression manifests itself on their
bodies."--Vox "Machado's debut is the most blisteringly
brilliant story collection of the fall."--Book Riot "All good
story collections are in some sense unified by a style or theme
that binds the book together, but few cohere with as much force and
energy as this book. . . . Her Body and Other Parties is an artful
powerhouse and a writing textbook rolled into one. It is fearsome
and fearless. It is a book that won't be forgotten."--Los
Angeles Review of Books "Her work is brazenly unapologetic, or
perhaps unapologetically brazen. Her fearlessness, combined with
some spellbinding writing, delivers stories that are at once
discomfiting and revelatory."--Washington Independent Review
of Books "Artfully structured stories. . . . [Her Body and Other
Parties is] a vibrant collection that presents women in their
vulnerabilities and strengths in relationships with men, in
relationships with other women, and in reflection upon their own
bodies as they sort through the social conventions that have long
stifled their full expression of self."--Seattle Review of
Books "Her Body and Other Parties is as strong, and
strange, a short story collection as any you'll read this year.
From story to story, often from paragraph to paragraph, Machado
mixes and matches genres--a fairy tale here and a post-apocalyptic
vision there, a little science fiction sprinkled with a little body
horror--reconfiguring old tropes and helping us to see what is at
stake in them."--Commonweal "Machado's writing is embodied
and sensuous."--Tor.com "Her Body and Other Parties may be
Carmen Maria Machado's first book, but it's one that puts her
squarely front of mind as one of the most talented writers today.
There are no rules in the stories she puts forth; instead, it's all
about buckling up and enjoying theride--and boy, is it an enjoyable
ride."--PopSugar "The prose is inventive and unrestrained,
with the deliberate precision of a spider that probably, usually,
kills her mates. . . . Each story is its own, gripping universe,
but perhaps even more impressive: Machado exudes a palpable sense
of defiance on the page, slipping out of the trappings of what
separates 'literary fiction' from erotica; 'serious' work from
fantasy; love from lust. Her women often exist not as women with
insatiable sexual appetites for the man or woman opposite them, but
for sex itself--an idea so simple, yet radical in our present
culture."--Girlboss "Each [story] is clever, provocative and
refreshingly new."--MPR News "This book feels like meeting
Angela Carter for a wild night of drinking and dancing. The
experimentation with form is simply astonishing, and there is a
directness in the treatment of sexuality and identity that is both
refreshing and deeply affecting. I assume that I'll reread this
book every year for the rest of my life."--Rakesh Satyal, The
Millions "Her Body and Other Parties is compelling,
gloriously weird, and, though some of the narrators are
occasionally deeply frightened, the stories collected are nothing
less than fearless. Genre and gender bending, erudite and steamy,
Machado's stories manage to defy expectation and be compulsively
readable."--New York Journal of Books "Machado melds folklore
and fabulist images with the raw realities of love, sex, queerness
and alienation, forging a poetic sensibility that's full and alive
with possibilities in a way that narrower realism could never
match. . . . Machado pulls everything together with bravura. . . .
[Her Body and Other Parties] demonstrates that literature,
when forthright and brave, can simultaneously dig deep within the
self and reframe the greater world."--Shelf Awareness
"Machado is a revolution. She is at once a funny, dark, terrifying,
uplifting anti-Lovecraft who observes in the everyday oppressions
of heteropatriarchy and late capitalism what is truly horrifying,
nonetheless finding release in the dark's nooks and crannies. . . .
Her Body and Other Parties is fiery, mischievous, and elusive. Like
the worlds Machado glimpses: brutal and yet
life-affirming."--World Literature Today "Machado understands
and commands the body so well it proliferates the text, and the
reader is left with gasps and sighs. . . . [Her Body and Other
Parties] is poetic and powerful, a profound call to
action."--The Brooklyn Rail "A surreal powerhouse of a
book."--Vol. 1 Brooklyn "Machado bends much more than genre
in these brilliant stories--she's bending the very fabric of
storytelling, working with new models of textuality, orality, and
corporeality."--Ploughshares "Reminiscent of the work of
Shirley Jackson, Angela Carter, Kelly Link, and Mariana Enriquez,
Machado remixes strands of myth, horror, and pop culture and gives
us something uniquely her own. Her Body and Other Parties is as
much a thrilling reading experience as it is a powerful and
important exploration of women's lives."--Lambda Literary "A
rich work of literary horror. . . . An instant classic."--The
Riveter "The world of Carmen Maria Machado is bright and bizarre,
full of magic and haunted places."--Hazlitt "Stunning. . . .
What Maachado is doing here couldn't really be done within the
bounds of conventional SF or fantasy, but it couldn't be done
without it either--and that's part of what makes Her Body and Other
Parties as important as it is exciting."--Locus "This
collection is brilliant, stunning and strange--a wholly evocative
read."--The Fold "These are stories that listen more than
they speak. . . . Machado, refusing victimhood, turns her
relatively hidden position into a strength. She uses it as a form
of protest, like her invisible girls in 'Real Women Have Bodies',
to say that, although the world keeps coming up with new and
interesting ways to convince us that some women are worth less,
worth nothing, she knows better."--The White Review "Within
that crisp writing style are humor and sorrow and a seamless mashup
of genres: from horror and fantasy to domestic
drama. . . . The world of Machado's heroines starts out just a bit
divergent from the one we recognize, revealing twists and
contortions that still seem bizarre but real."--Pasatiempo
"An original, stylistically cohesive, steadfastly queer book of
stories."--San Antonio Current "The best surrealist fiction
resides somewhere between the eerie and the actual, and that's
exactly where Carmen Maria Machado feels most at home. . . . A
stunning debut."--Los Angeles Magazine "The collection
unpacks queerness, the female body, feminism, and the fantastic
with a surrealism that will leave you
aching."--Philadelphia Weekly "Her Body and Other
Parties is a one-of-a-kind collection -- a potent blend of
atavistic spookiness and hallucinatory modernity, told with verve,
witchiness, and wit. This is the kind of book that will leave you
haunted, and thrilled, by the possibilities of contemporary
fiction."--Dallas Morning News "Machado blends a heady mix of
fairy tales, erotica and magic realism that toys with the readers'
expectations and lingers in the imagination afterwards."--San
Diego City Beat "A blend of horror, erotica and fairytale that
makes for an original, stylistically cohesive, steadfastly queer
book of stories."--Orlando Weekly "These are weird, sexy,
scary tales that thrum at the electrifying junction of fear and
desire."--Indiana Review "These stories are at once
apocalyptic, timeless and brutally timely. . . . They are merciless
in their prescience, hearken to the gothic and pre-gothic origins
of magic, and are rooted in the brutality of womanhood. . . . Do
not miss this bitingly clever, astonishing work."--Book
Reporter "This could be a book that changes how you look at the
world, but that's not necessarily Machado's goal. Really, it's for
the ones who already look at the world with mistrust. For them,
these stories say: I believe you."--Fiction Unbound
"Electrifying. . . . Machado moves from the surreal to the real and
back again with incredible ease. This spellbinding collection marks
the arrival of an impressive new writer."--BookPage
"Delightfully visceral, these stories invite the reader to witness
and experience the various traumas and pleasures that women live in
their day-to-day lives as they are translated into a generic
cornucopia of horror, fabulism, surrealism, and
more."--American Microreviews & Interviews "Weird, sexy,
funny and imaginative."--PureWow "Genre and gender bending,
erudite and steamy, Machado's stories manage to defy expectation
and be compulsively readable. . . . They launch the reader into a
realm rarely seen in fiction, and the journey, at times
discomfiting, is always exhilarating."--The Military Spouse
Book Review "Machado's debut collection brings together eight
stories that showcase her fluency in the bizarre, magical, and
sharply frightening depths of the imagination. . . . The fierceness
and abundance of sex and desire in these stories, the way emotion
is inextricably connected with the concerns of the body, makes even
the most outlandish imaginings strangely familiar. Machado writes
with furious grace. She plays with form and expectation in ways
that are both funny and elegant but never obscure. . . . An
exceptional and pungently inventive first book."--Kirkus
Reviews, starred review "Machado creates eerie, inventive
worlds shimmering with supernatural swerves in this engrossing
debut collection. . . . Machado builds entire interior lives
through sparse and minor details, turning even litanies of
refrigerator contents and free-association on the coming of autumn
into memorable meditations on identity and female disempowerment. .
. . Machado's slightly slanted world echoes our own in ways that
will entertain, challenge, and move readers."--Publishers
Weekly, starred review "The writing is always lyrical, the
narration refreshingly direct, and the sex abundant, and although
the supernatural elements are not overt, every story is terrifying.
These weird tales present a slightly askew version of the world as
we know it and force us, no matter our gender, to reconsider our
current life choices and relationships."--Booklist,
starred review "This brilliant debut compilation showcases a fresh
literary voice. Machado's originality and emotional acumen make her
a match for Karen Russell or Kelly Link. Highly
recommended."--Library Journal, starred
review
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