American Animism bookcover

American Animism

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Description

Animals inhabit the edges of the stories in American Animism, the astonishing debut collection from Jamey Gallagher. Veering between realism and magical realism, each story illuminates something necessary, something true. A girl working in a cryptid museum, a boy in the attic of a gift shop on Mystery Hill, a vacation house in Nova Scotia where strange things happen: these are stories of transformation and becoming.

Product Details

PublisherCornerstone Press
Publish DateMarch 11, 2025
Pages228
LanguageEnglish
TypeBook iconPaperback / softback
EAN/UPC9781960329714
Dimensions8.5 X 5.5 X 0.5 inches | 0.6 pounds

About the Author

Jamey Gallagher teaches writing at the Community College of Baltimore County. He has more than fifty pieces published in literary journals, including CutBank, Bull Fiction, and DIAGRAM. He lives in Baltimore.

Reviews

"American Animism is a triumph. With a deeply empathetic eye and a natural-born writer's ear, Jamey Gallagher fearlessly enters the morally ambivalent and deeply subjective realm of his characters. Jamey Gallagher is a major talent!"

-Andre Dubus III, National Book Award finalist, author of House of Sand and Fog

"This story collection is the work of a true narrative virtuoso. Jamey Gallagher works in the realms of fear and violence as well as he does tenderness and nostalgia. All the notes are here, and each is masterfully played. American Animism is a collection of small treasures, told with an honesty and insight that pull you deeply into new worlds, and leaves you pondering your own."

-Tom Coyne, New York Times bestselling author, A Course Called America

"Jamey Gallagher is a master of simple, poignant narratives of displacement, dislocation, and abandonment. The stress here-as it should be-is on the emotional lives, the quiet inner storms, of individuals enduring or recovering from dramas and traumas. No specific location, apart from North America itself, limits Gallagher's vision and concern, and as a whole these sad sojourns and whispery odysseys produce a detailed topography of the bumpy swales of the American soul. A brilliant debut."

-J.C. Hallman, author of Say Anarcha

"Damn, these stories are good. The lean prose recalls the best of noir fiction, but there's more here than first meets the eye. Unflinching forays into such a dizzying array of worlds, narrators, and dramatic situations that it's hard to believe they all came from the same imagination. You can't predict where these stories are going, but you quickly realize it will be worth the ride. Buckle up and hang on."

-Christopher Chambers, author of Kind of Blue

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