About the Author

Stuart Dybek is the author of four other books of fiction, including Ecstatic Cahoots, published simultaneously with this volume, as well as two collections of poetry. The recipient of many prizes and awards--including the PEN/Malamud Award, an Arts and Letters Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, a Whiting Writers' Award, and four O. Henry Awards--he is the Distinguished Writer in Residence at Northwestern University. He divides his time between Evanston, Illinois, Kalamazoo, Michigan, and the Florida Keys.

Reviews

"Not only our most relevant writer, but maybe our best." --Darin Strauss, New York Times Book Review "What I will remember about these stories . . . [are the] sudden moments that rise up out of a conversation or out of the surface of a mirror, or which suddenly appear, as shocking as being served an entree of predigested seaweed from the beaks of swifts: a little alarming, a little wonderful." --Meg Wolitzer, NPR "Stuart Dybek's genre-bending short stories flout many of the basic premises of fiction itself. . . . What drives them is less the need to tell a story than to evoke--through closely observed, carefully rendered images and free-associative visual memories--physical sensations. . . . His writing feels painterly." --Shoshana Olidort, The Chicago Tribune "Ecstatic Cahoots and Paper Lantern confirm Dybek as a virtuoso of the short story--a nimble, compassionate writer who uses precise, lucid, original descriptions. He shows us all we need to know and nothing more." --Valerie Milner, The San Francisco Chronicle "Here are bold, frankly erotic tales of transporting force--stories so sensual someone, somewhere, must be reading one aloud to a lover on a rumpled hotel bed." --John Freeman, The Boston Globe "To read [Dybek] is to be reminded of the resonance of small moments, the connections that arise and dissipate with the passing power of a thought . . . Again and again, we get a notion of what might have been, of life or narrative going in different ways." --David L. Ulin, Los Angeles Times "A modern master . . . Dybek is incapable of writing a dull page." --Clarence Brown, The Seattle Times "The nine stories gathered here have appeared, scattered across two decades, in the most prestigious American outlets for short fiction; they make for a remarkably unified and consistent collection. . . . A very fine book from a gifted practitioner of the short story form." --Publisher's Weekly, starred review "Paper Lantern . . . deserves to be read and reread by those who cherish words and all that they evoke when they are carefully strung together." --Kevin Grauke, philly.com