Shannon Robinson
Shannon Robinson's work has appeared in Gettysburg Review, Iowa Review, Water-Stone Review, Nimrod, Joyland, and elsewhere. She has an MFA in fiction from Washington University in St. Louis, and in 2011 she was the Writer-in-Residence at Interlochen Center for the Arts. Other honors include the Katherine Anne Porter Prize for Fiction, grants from the Elizabeth George Foundation and the Canada Council for the Arts, a Hedgebrook Fellowship, a Sewanee Scholarship, and an Independent Artist Award from the Maryland Arts Council. Currently, she teaches creative writing and pedagogy at Johns Hopkins University and lives in Baltimore with her husband and son.
by Shannon Robinson
Winner of the Press 53 Award for Short Fiction
Coming May 3, 2024
ISBN 978-1-950413-75-1
8.5 x 5.5 softcover, 242 pages
Pre-orders ship early April 2024
The Ill-Fitting Skin is layered with surreal story telling but remains an extraordinarily realistic read, in the sense that even the most solid realities of life—and death—tend to blur and shimmer at their raw edges. The talkative bird that nests in a woman’s womb is as real as the “previous tenant.” The love of a mother for her uncontrollable son is as real as the wildness that is in her too. The women of The Ill-Fitting Skin are real women—who work and grieve and create and destroy, who love and do not love, whether at the roll of the dice or because “the pages are paths, and you will have to choose among them.”
Early Praise for The Ill-Fitting Skin
The stories in The Ill-Fitting Skin are funny, unflinching, and strange. The mundane and the magical rub together until they're transformed into pearls in Shannon Robinson’s sharp and lucid prose. Mordant and morbid, these stories will stay with you and take up residence in a dark chamber of your heart.
—Katya Apekina, author of The Deeper the Water the Uglier the Fish and Mother Doll
Clever, harrowing, bitingly funny, imaginative, absurd, anatomical, and wise, these stories expertly shift from the magical realms of werewolves and zombies to the stark realities of trying to claw out a semblance of existence one can live with. Robinson's inventive tales are sure to delight admirers of Kelly Link and Aimee Bender.
—Melinda Moustakis, author of Homestead and Bear Down, Bear North: Alaska Stories
With sharp insight, and heartbreaking humor, Shannon Robinson’s stunning debut story collection explores desire, motherhood, and the way that every connection a woman makes can become both a way to be seen and a way to disappear. Robinson shifts seamlessly between approaching the world with a visceral clarity and building fantasy worlds that illuminate the strangeness of our own. The Ill-Fitting Skin is a biting, breathtaking catalogue of the many ways being a human can feel beastly.
—Danielle Evans, author of Before You Suffocate Your Own Fool Self and The Office of Historical Corrections