A Paris Review Staff Pick, one of Chicago Tribune's 25 Hot Books of Summer, and one of The A.V. Club's 15 Most Anticipated Books of 2019 A stark, elegiac account of unexpected pleasures and the progress of seasons
Fifteen years ago, Kathryn Scanlan found a stranger’s five-year diary at an estate auction in a small town in Illinois. The owner of the diary was eighty-six years old when she began recording the details of her life in the small book, a gift from her daughter and son-in-law. The diary was falling apart―water-stained and illegible in places―but magnetic to Scanlan nonetheless.
After reading and rereading the diary, studying and dissecting it, for the next fifteen years she played with the sentences that caught her attention, cutting, editing, arranging, and rearranging them into the composition that became Aug 9―Fog (she chose the title from a note that was tucked into the diary). “Sure grand out,” the diarist writes. “That puzzle a humdinger,” she says, followed by, “A letter from Lloyd saying John died the 16th.” An entire state of mourning reveals itself in “2 canned hams.” The result of Scanlan’s collaging is an utterly compelling, deeply moving meditation on life and death. 
In Aug 9―Fog, Scanlan’s spare, minimalist approach has a maximal emotional effect, remaining with the reader long after the book ends. It is an unclassifiable work from a visionary young writer and artist―a singular portrait of a life revealed by revision and restraint.

Aug 9 - Fog

Literature & Fiction

Scanlan, Kathryn

United States

A collection of innovative and ambitious short stories from a visionary young literary artist In The Dominant Animal―Kathryn Scanlan’s adventurous, unsettling debut collection―compression is key. Sentences have been relentlessly trimmed, tuned, and teased for maximum impact, and a ferocious attention to rhythm and sound results in a palpable pulse of excitability and distress. The nature of love is questioned at a golf course, a flower shop, an all-you-can-eat buffet. The clay head of a man is bought and displayed as a trophy. Interior life manifests on the physical plane, where characters―human and animal―eat and breathe, provoke and injure one another. 
With exquisite control, Scanlan moves from expansive moods and fine afternoons to unease and violence―and also from deliberate and generative ambiguity to shocking, revelatory exactitude. Disturbances accrue as the collection progresses. How often the conclusions open―rather than tie―up. How they twist alertly. No mercy, a character says―and these stories are merciless and strange and absolutely masterful.

The Dominant Animal: Stories

MCD x FSG Originals

About one woman’s fine, hard life at the racetrack, Kick the Latch–with its ruthless concision and artful mysteries–is lightning in a bottle Kathryn Scanlan’s Kick the Latch vividly captures the arc of one woman’s life at the racetrack―the flat land and ramshackle backstretch; the bad feelings and friction; the winner’s circle and the racetrack bar; the fancy suits and fancy boots; and the “particular language” of “grooms, jockeys, trainers, racing secretaries, stewards, pony people, hotwalkers, everybody”―with economy and integrity. 
Based on transcribed interviews with Sonia, a horse trainer, the novel investigates form and authenticity in a feat of synthesis reminiscent of Charles Reznikoff’s Testimony. As Scanlan puts it, “I wanted to preserve―amplify, exaggerate―Sonia’s idiosyncratic speech, her bluntness, her flair as a storyteller. I arrived at what you could call a composite portrait of a self.” Whittled down with a fiercely singular artistry, Kick the Latch bangs out of the starting gate and carries the reader on a careening joyride around the inside track.

Kick the Latch

Literary

New Directions

This anthology collects original writing and art by novelists, poets, and academics about their pets, including a killer chihuahua, a catatonic toy poodle, a contraband cat, a backyard full of endangered desert tortoises, five forgotten parakeets, and a skinny ex-racehorse named Joe. From legends like Ann Beattie and Christine Schutt to indie lit cult figures like Scott McClanahan, this anthology collects writing from some of today's best literary talent.

Pets

BEATTIE, ANN

Manguso, Sarah

Nutt, David

Lin, Tao

Akutagawa, Ryūnosuke

Leidner, Mark

Butler, Blake

Pink, Sam

Polek, Nicolette

Schütt, Christine

Cottrell, Patty Yumi

McClanahan, Scott

Hodson, Chelsea

Bird, Raegan

Choi, Ryan C. K.

Clune,Michael W.

DeWitt, Annie

Igarashi, Yuka

Iskandrian, Kristen

Okoyomon, Precious

Whitten, Mallory

Genre Fiction

Tyrant Books

A collection of innovative and ambitious short stories from a visionary young literary artist\nIn The Dominant Animal—Kathryn Scanlan’s adventurous, unsettling debut collection—compression is key. Sentences have been relentlessly trimmed, tuned, and teased for maximum impact, and a ferocious attention to rhythm and sound results in a palpable pulse of excitability and distress. The nature of love is questioned at a golf course, a flower shop, an all-you-can-eat buffet. The clay head of a man is bought and displayed as a trophy. Interior life manifests on the physical plane, where characters—human and animal—eat and breathe, provoke and injure one another.\nWith exquisite control, Scanlan moves from expansive moods and fine afternoons to unease and violence—and also from deliberate and generative ambiguity to shocking, revelatory exactitude. Disturbances accrue as the collection progresses. How often the conclusions open—rather than tie—up. How they twist alertly. No mercy, a character says—and these stories are merciless and strange and absolutely masterful.

Dominant Animal

Daunt Books

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Books by Scanlan, Kathryn