Full Description
Winner of the Raz/Shumaker Prairie Schooner Book Prize in Fiction
Longlisted for the 2025 PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize for Debut Short Story Collection
Thanks for This Riot explores the limits of kindness, the weight of being needed, and the fear of being misunderstood. A group counselor is taunted by a truth-divining piano bench, a voice actor shouts her abortion at the state capitol, a tired caregiver tangles with a pair of stand-up comics, a small-town newspaper office shelters an otherworldly tattletale, a backwoods acupuncturist leans on her least-exciting offspring, a girl in a strapless bra takes a vengeful go-kart ride, and a woman gets surgery to lower her expectations (she thinks it went "okay"). Grouped by types of riot-external riots, internal riots, and laugh riots-Thanks for This Riot is a poignant and mordantly funny collection with a distinctly feminist viewpoint.
Contents
External Riots: Threats and Violence
More Restrictive Than Supportive
The Crowded Private Cottage
All I Need Are These Four Walls and Some Positive Feedback
No Space Is Too Small When Your Head Is Detachable
Babies Don't Keep
Internal Riots: Secrets and Lies
Prove It
These New Francescas
Perceptor Weekly
Bulk Trash Is for Lovers
Safe Distances
Laugh Riots: Growing and Trying
Enviable Levels
Full Stop
The Right Light
Wilderness Mound
Thanks for This Riot
Acknowledgments
Source Acknowledgments
