ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I grew up in another language. For teaching me to write in English, for showing me how to be a person and a woman and a writer in New York — I’m indebted to more people than I could ever list here.
Elizabeth Reichert, this book is yours as much as it is mine.
PJ Mark, it has recently been scientifically proven, is the best literary agent on earth. Thank you, PJ, for believing in me so long before there was any real reason to. And thank you for saying “a book is born when it is ready to be born.”
Emily Bell is a rockstar editor. Rumor has it some writers are now tattooing her name on their bodies. Thank you, Emily, for your skill and for your heart.
FSG is full of rockstars, and I am grateful to every single one of them, especially Jeff Seroy, who responds to e-mails before he receives them, and Brian Gittis, a magician in glasses.
A huge thank-you also goes out to everyone at Random House Canada, and mostly to Kiara Kent. Kiara, thank you for your generosity and your kindness and your intelligence.
My parents, Avi and Eliya Oria, and my sister, Dana Oria, are three of my most favorite people in this world, and they are the people I talk to when I forget how to breathe. Each of them is a powerhouse of strength and talent, and together they are an army.
My two years at the MFA writing program at Sarah Lawrence College taught me most of what I know as a writer. In my life, SLC has been a gift that keeps on giving, and I am forever grateful to everyone in that community.
The following humans helped tremendously with early versions of these stories and/or showed up for me in more ways than I can count: Melissa Febos, Nelly Reifler, Caitlin Delohery, Hossannah Asuncion, Diana Spechler, Joshua Henkin, Claire Oria-Friedman, Charlotte Oria, Jill Jarvis, Galit Lotan, Ryan Britt, Birna Anna Bjornsdottir, Aryn Kyle, Kate Angus, Alison Espach, Maya Michaeli, Asaf Sandhaus, Annie Levy, Tali Herskowitz, Julie Stevenson, Syreeta McFadden, Greg Blumstein, Manya Fox, Honor Moore.
Thank you, Ariel Steinlauf, for years of love and friendship, and for the title of this book.
Special thanks to T Kira Madden, Karissa Chen, and Chesley Hicks, for their talents and generosity.
Elizabeth Cohen, a gifted tourguide: thank you always.
Thank you, Aspen Matis, for writing alongside me on some tough days, and for lending me your bionic ear whenever I asked. And to everyone in the Joe community past and present: you people remind me why and show me how.
In the last few years, I’ve gotten to walk to a gorgeous campus in the middle of Brooklyn and talk about fiction for a living. Thank you for that, Thad Ziolkowski and everyone at Pratt, and thank you for your spirit.
If heaven exists it is the MacDowell Colony, and in the past couple of years I’ve been lucky enough to die twice. I don’t know that I would ever have finished this collection without that good fortune.
I am similarly indebted to the Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts, the Sozopol Fiction Seminars in Bulgaria, the Writer’s Room at the Betsy, and the Ucross Foundation.
This book is dedicated to Nehama Segalovitz. Writing is nothing more than a way to look for you.
A NOTE ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Shelly Oria was born in Los Angeles and grew up in Israel. Her fiction has appeared in The Paris Review, McSweeney’s, TriQuarterly, and Quarterly West, among other places, and has won a number of awards, including the Indiana Review Fiction Prize. She curates the series Sweet! Actors Reading Writers in the East Village and teaches fiction at Pratt Institute, where she also codirects the Writers’ Forum.