Whether you know her from her short stories in The New Yorker or The Atlantic or from one of her bestselling novels, Lauren Groff is arguably one of the leading literary voices in the U.S. Groff will share from her new collection of short stories, Brawler, which reflects upon humanity's ceaseless battle between our dark and light angels. Ranging from the 1950s to the present day and moving across age, class, and region––from New England to Florida to California––the nine stories in Groff's newest collection dive into the animal and the divine within us all. The characters paint a different picture of the same theme: a young woman suddenly responsible for her disabled sibling; a hot-tempered high school swimmer in need of an adult; a mother blinded by the loss of her family; and a banking successor with a different kind of inheritance. Motivated by love, challenged by the double edges of other people's good intentions, they all try to do the right thing for as long as they can. It's through these stories that Groff illuminates what it means to be human. Groff's popularity comes from her insight into human nature. Through her various stories, Brawler offers specific turning points in people's lives, highlighting all of our thin boundaries between love and fear, compassion and violence, reason and instinct, altruism and what it takes to survive. Lauren Groff is a three-time National Book Award finalist and the New York Times bestselling author of the novels The Monsters of Templeton, Arcadia, Fates and Furies, Matrix, and The Vaster Wilds, and the celebrated short story collections Delicate Edible Birds and Florida. She has won the Story Prize and the Joyce Carol Oates Prize, and has been a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. In 2024, she was named one of the "TIME 100 most influential people." Groff's work regularly appears in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, and elsewhere. Her work has been translated into thirty-six languages. She lives in Gainesville, Florida, where she and her husband run an independent bookstore, The Lynx. Amber Flame is an interdisciplinary artist garnering residencies with Hedgebrook, Baldwin for the Arts, Millay Arts, and more. A former church kid from the Southwest, Flame's first collection of poetry, Ordinary Cruelty, published in 2017 through Write Bloody Press. Flame's second book, apocrifa, a love story told in verse, launched May 2023 from Red Hen Press. Flame is Deputy Publisher at Generous Press, a new romance venture publishing inclusive love stories, and Program Director for Hedgebrook, a literary organization serving women. Amber Flame is a queer Black dandy mama who falls hard for a jumpsuit and some fresh kicks. Buy the Book Brawler: Stories Elliott Bay Book Company

Ask this episode

“What did the council decide on item 42?” — answered with the speaker and the moment.

Transcript

Related