BOOKS
EVERYONE WANTS TO BE AMBASSADOR TO FRANCE
A seagull, a goat, and a teenage boy enter into a bizarre love triangle that leaves one of them dead and the other two changed forever. A grief-stricken astronaut quits NASA to paint pictures of the moon. A lonely scientist creates stars in his basement and becomes enraged when he discovers that one of his stars harbors life. An eighteenth-century British aristocrat adopts two teenage girls and absconds with them to France, determined to raise one of them to become his perfect wife. By turns humorous and heartbreaking, this debut collection, which Foreword Review calls “a weird and singular work,” offers stories that dazzle, challenge, and ignite.
WATCHLIST: 32 STORIES BY PERSONS OF INTEREST
In Watchlist, some of today’s most prominent and promising fiction writers from around the globe respond to, meditate on, and mine for inspiration the surveillance culture in which we live. With contributions from Etgar Keret, T.C. Boyle, Robert Coover, Aimee Bender, Jim Shepard, Alissa Nutting, Charles Yu, Cory Doctorow, and many more, WATCHLIST unforgettably confronts the question: What does it mean to be watched?
“A brave and necessary set of early flares of the literary imagination into the Panopticon we all find ourselves living inside these days.” —Jonathan Lethem
“What Jonathan Lethem did for amnesia in his anthology The Vintage Book of Amnesia, Bryan Hurt does for surveillance with Watchlist — a genre of speculative fiction is firmly established.” —The National Post
STORIES
BRAIN IN A JAR I’ve never known Nona when she wasn’t dying. No Contact, 2021
BOTTOM TEN PERCENT Ever since I moved back here, things have been pretty messed up. Action, Spectacle, 2020
SEAGULL In my town there was once a seagull who had been reincarnated as a man. Denver Quarterly, 2018
In October when the moon is a blood-gorged tick, Captain Doom goes sailing. 7x7, 2016
SPOOKY ACTION AT A DISTANCE We were surprised, of course, that when we built our time machine it turned out to be a Delorean. Electric Literature, 2015
CONTRACT When the CEO took his children to the bone altar, the girl turned her head and exposed the softest part of her neck. She was ready for it. Literary Hub, 2015
HONEYMOON The day before their honeymoon she got the flu. Joyland, 2015
MOONLESS It took some doing but I finally made a white dwarf star like they’d been making out in Santa Fe. Guernica Magazine, 2015
THE BILINGUAL SCHOOL So we sent our kids to the bilingual school. The Toast, 2015
SUBMISSION ATTACK Hi K—, We enjoyed Bryan’s story, but we are looking for something more true, something that explores deeper human emotions. Tin House, 2014
MY OTHER CAR DRIVES ITSELF In the nineteenth century, when Karl Benz pitched his car idea to investors, he tried to temper their expectations by telling them that demand would be limited because of lack of chauffeurs The Kenyon Review, 2013
THE SADNESS OF TYCHO BRAHE'S MOOSE So first of all not a moose exactly. The American Reader, 2013
THE LAST WORD He is mad at her because she says that he always needs the last word. Tikkun, 2013
THE DIALOGUE OF DOGS Here’s one you might not have heard. Nat. Brut, 2012
VICISSITUDES, CA Brandon and Kara went hiking but were unprepared for the physical challenge. New England Review, 2012
THE FOURTH MAN It means nothing to me. I have no opinion about it, and I don’t care. TriQuarterly, 2012
ALL OF THE ARCTIC EXPLORERS First of all Pytheas, Pytheas of Greece. Joyland, 2012
THE BEAST OF MARRIAGE Thomas Day was rich but very ugly. Tin House, 2012
ESSAYS AND INTERVIEWS
WRITING THE KALEIDOSCOPE Jackson oozed cool. He had great tattoos, great shoes, espoused veganism, and wrote these hyperkinetic, neon-tinged stories full of style and confidence. Los Angeles Review of Books, 2021
A VISIT FROM THE PRESIDENT In October, near the end of that terrible year, there was finally something to look forward to. TriQuarterly, 2018
YOU ARE BEING WATCHED When I was growing up, my father used to receive phone calls that disturbed him greatly. Los Angeles Review of Books, 2016
THE FAILURE OF LANGUAGE AND A DREAM OF THE WEST Bonnie Nadzam is my dear friend and favorite writer. Electric Literature, 2016
DIRTY LAUNDRY The plan was to go to Columbus, look at some houses, maybe rifle through some homeowners’ personal things while my real estate agent wasn’t looking—an underwear drawer here, a medicine cabinet there—and report back. Catapult, 2016
EVERYTHING IS REAL I first came to know Miles Klee when I published him in my anthology, Watchlist: 32 Stories by Persons of Interest. Hobart, 2016
WE ARE BEING WATCHED It began with the baby monitor. Literary Hub, 2016
RESEARCH NOTES Everyone Wants to Be Ambassador to France: the long title of my book is also a line from the book’s longest story, “Vicissitudes, CA.” Necessary Fiction, 2015
UPRIGHT BEASTS Before Lincoln Michel’s confident and inventive debut story collection, Upright Beasts, even properly begins, we’re cued into its darkness, weirdness, and spirited sense of play. Full Stop, 2015
SHOOT THE MOON While I was editing and compiling the stories that would go into Watchlist I was completely unsure as to whether or not I would, or even wanted to, include a story of my own. The Quivering Pen, 2015
WE ARE THE OLFANAUTS In October 2014, Wired published an article called, “The Laborers Who Keep Dick Pics and Beheadings Out of Your Facebook Feed,” that investigates the lives and careers of the 100,000-plus men and women, often from the Philippines, whose jobs are to scour and remove offensive material from the world’s social networking sites. Electric Literature, 2015
LIMITS TO KNOWING One of the first things you’ll hear about Haruki Murakami’s new novel, Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage, is that it went through eight printings the first week it was released in Japan, where fans camped out overnight to be among the first to buy the book. Los Angeles Review of Books, 2014
BROADENING MY MIND The narrator, nineteen-years-old, out broadening his mind after the death of his parents and his subsequent many-yeared stint in boarding school, where he steals a volume by the philosopher de Selby (who believes, among other things, that the world is sausage-shaped and that night is caused by the steady accretion of black air), takes to the road, and is befallen by tragedy. Tin House, 2012