


Kimberly King Parsons's debut collection Black Light was longlisted for the National Book Award and the Story Prize, and was a finalist for the Texas First Fiction Award, the Edmund White Award, and the Oregon Book Award. Nada Alic is the author of Bad Thoughts and a forthcoming novel. Her story “The Intruder” was shortlisted for the CBC Short Fiction Prize 2019, “My New Life” was published in No Tokens Journal. And she conjures them all with a voice that is instantly arresting, unexpectedly hilarious, and absolutely unforgettable.

Though each of Alic’s characters thrive and ache in different circumstances, they all grapple with the most painful equations of modern life: love, trust, power, loneliness, desire, violation, and vengeance. And in “The Intruder,” a lonely woman’s break-in fantasy quickly builds to a full-blown obsession, until she finds an unwitting partner with whom to act it out. In “Daddy's Girl,” the daughter of Eastern European immigrants tries to connect to her distant and difficult father through the invention of increasingly elaborate home maintenance repairs. The narrator of "Ghost Baby"-the spirit of a proto-child assigned to a couple whose chemistry is waning-writhes in disembodied frustration as its parents fail to conceive it. In “Earth to Lydia,” a support group meets to enjoy earthly pleasures after achieving "too much enlightenment," engaging in bizarre exercises that escalate to a point of violence and fear. To cope, they live in their baddest thoughts: the lush, strange landscape of female make-believe. Nada Alic's women-the perverts, nobodies, reality TV stars, poetic hopefuls, shameless party girls, and self-help addicts of Los Angeles and its environs-are all wrestling with a shared stark reality: the modern world. Kira Madden, author of Long Live the Tribe of Fatherless Girls “Nada Alic’s Bad Thoughts is lit up with the perception, wit, and cunning of Miranda July and Sally Rooney.” -T. Īn exhilarating and delightfully deviant debut story collection that, with comedic precision and compulsive irreverence, explores the most surreal and inadmissible fantasies of contemporary women. You may then see a window reading "waiting for host to start webinar," but sit tight-you will be admitted as soon as we begin broadcasting live! You will be able to submit questions using the Q&A feature.Įnjoying At Home with Literati? Donate $5 to sustain our programming here. You will be prompted to enter a first name and email upon joining. Note: we are now hosting on Zoom webinars. She will be joined in conversation by Kimberly King Parsons.Ĭlick here to join the webinar event on 7/19. We're pleased to welcome Nada Alic to our At Home with Literati Series in support of Bad Thoughts.
