Wild Failure Stories

A dazzling debut collection of ten powerful, feminist, and queer short stories from bestselling author Zoe Whittall

“Absorbing and wrenchingly intimate, with a rare balance of wit and tenderness.”—Jenny Fran Davis, author of Dykette

In Wild Failure, characters encounter feelings of shame, desire, attachment, and disconnection as they find themselves navigating their way through bad decisions, unusual situations, and fraught relationships.

In “Oh, El,” a dominant woman can’t stop herself from toying with the tender heart of her co-worker. The title story, “Wild Failure,” is a doomed love story between an agoraphobic and a wilderness hiker. In “Half-Pipe,” a teen girl’s heterosexual ambivalence results in chaos at a skate park. A group of idealistic roommates find themselves the subject of a true crime podcast in “Murder at the Elm Street Collective House.” In “The Sex Castle Lunch Buffet,” a woman reflects on her brief stint at a nineties strip club after she learns of the death of a former client.

Wild Failure is replete with Whittall’s perceptive humor and acute insights into human nature. It’s also a dynamic and vibrant collection of poetic fiction that contend with the meaning of desire in a world that devalues femininity and queerness.

Zoe Whittall is the author of five novels, including the recent bestseller The Fake, which was longlisted for the Toronto Book Award. The New York Times called her fourth novel, The Spectacular, a “highly readable testament to the strength of the maternal bond.” Her third novel, The Best Kind of People, was shortlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize. Her second novel, Holding Still for as Long as Possible, won a Lambda Literary Award and was an American Library Association’s Stonewall Honor Book. Her debut novel, Bottle Rocket Hearts, won the Writers’ Trust of Canada’s Dayne Ogilvie Prize. She is also a Canadian Screen Award–winning TV writer. She lives in Prince Edward County.