"And the writing ... oh, the writing."

"Each story reads like a mini-novel because the paragraphs pack a punch; worlds are contained in a single page. And the writing ... oh, the writing."--San Francisco Chronicle

Robin Black’s short stories are populated with men and women who face losses both real and unexpected. A philandering father learns the limits of his ability to fool his blind daughter about who he is. An artist paints the portrait of a man suffering from dementia while she mourns the end of a long love affair. A fifth grade show-and-tell session reveals the world to be stranger and more dangerous than one girl ever imagined. A father commits suicide on the same day his daughter’s bathwater is charged with electricity, leaving her struggling to find meaning in the coincidence. A young widow finds herself envious of an acquaintance who has a prosthetic leg, and a living spouse. A dying woman fantasizes about persuading her selfish, bullying neighbor to see the value of her ebbing life. A mother gains sympathy for her adult daughter’s infidelity even as her own world begins to expand in surprising ways. A man whose life is newly filled with love tries to reconnect with the daughter who staged her own disappearance years before. An accident on an Italian holiday and an unexpected connection with a stranger cause a woman to question her lifelong assumptions about herself.

“Ten incisive tales peopled with characters so fully imagined you’ll feel they’re in the room.”--People magazine

Robin Black’s stories and essays have appeared One Story, Colorado Review, The Georgia Review, Alaska Quarterly Review, Bellevue Literary Review, The Southern Review, and the anthology The Best Creative Nonfiction. She lives in Philadelphia.



Robin Black reads from If I Loved You I Would Tell You This at Magers & Quinn--7:30pm, Tuesday, June 7. Details are here.--David E