You Are Not a Stranger Here

In his bestselling and lavishly praised first book of stories, Adam Haslett explores lives that appear shuttered by loss and discovers entire worlds hidden inside them. The impact is at once harrowing and thrilling. An elderly inventor, burning with manic creativity, tries to reconcile with his estranged gay son. A bereaved boy draws a thuggish classmate into a relationship of escalating guilt and violence. A genteel middle-aged woman, a long-time resident of a psychiatric hospital, becomes the confidante of a lovelorn teenaged volunteer. Told with Chekhovian restraint and compassion, and conveying both the sorrow of life and the courage with which people rise to meet it,You Are Not a Stranger Hereis a triumph of storytelling.

<b>Adam Haslett’s</b> first collection of short stories<i> </i><b>You Are Not A Stranger Here</b> was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award, and won the 2002 L.L. Winship/PEN New England Award. Haslett is a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and the Yale Law School. His work has appeared in<i> Zoetrope: All-Story</i>,<i> The Yale Review</i>,<i> BOMB</i> magazine, and National Public Radio’s “Selected Shorts.” He has been a finalist for a National Magazine Award and received fellowships from the Provincetown Fine Arts Work Center and the Michener/Copernicus Society of America.  His story, “Devotion” will appear in the<i> </i><b>Best American Short Stories 2003</b> published in October.