Catapult

"Fridlund writes of families, marriage, and childhood as if our received wisdom--what we thought we knew about life and love and family--needs reparation. This is fiction as excavation, peeling away the machinery of people and converting it to narrative. Fridlund shines a spotlight on what gets hidden and unreported, and the result can be overwhelming--cutting and funny and filled with difficult truth." --Ben Marcus, author of The Flame Alphabet "Fridlund has already proven herself to be a singular talent." --NPR Selected by Ben Marcus as winner of the Mary McCarthy Prize in Short Fiction, Catapult follows Emily Fridlund's acclaimed debut novel History of Wolves . Sometimes calculating, at other times bewildered, Catapult 's characters orbit around each other, enacting a deeply human tragicomedy of wit, misunderstanding, and loss. With dexterous, atmospheric, and darkly comic prose, Fridlund conjures worlds where longing is open-ended, intentions misfire, and the line between comfort and cruelty is often difficult to discern. This is a gripping collection, unsettling as much in its familiarity as in its near-gothic strangeness. Emily Fridlund grew up in Minnesota and currently resides in the Finger Lakes region of New York. Her fiction has appeared in a variety of journals, including Boston Review, Zyzzyva, Five Chapters, New Orleans Review , and elsewhere. Fridlund's first novel, History of Wolves (Atlantic Monthly Press), was a Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers Selection and a #1 Indie Next pick.