JESS ARNDT received her MFA at the Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts at Bard College, and was a 2013 Graywolf SLS Fellow and 2010 Fiction Fellow at the New York Foundation of the Arts. Her writing has appeared in Fence, Bomb, Aufgabe, Parkett, and Night Papers, and in her manifesto for the Knife’s Shaking the Habitual world tour. She is a co–founder of New Herring Press, dedicated to publishing prose and polemics. She lives and works in Los Angeles.
Praise for Large Animals
A Buzzfeed Best Fiction Book of 2017 • An Entropy magazine Best
Book of 2017 “[A] bold new literary voice, borderless and brave.”
—O, The Oprah Magazine
“Jess Arndt’s Large Animals is wildly original, even as it joins in
with the classics of loaded, outlaw literature. Acerbic, ecstatic,
hilarious, psychedelic, and affecting in turn, this is an electric
debut.” —Maggie Nelson, National Book Critics Circle Award–winning
author of The Argonauts
"Reading Arndt is like walking toward a shimmering desert mirage
and being met with a cloud of acid instead of an oasis of cool
water. . . . A deeply transgressive, riveting shot out of the gate.
Arndt is one to watch."" —Kirkus Reviews
""Arndt’s short stories are delicious flights of fancy, or
obsession, or fertile curiosity—or, more accurately, some beguiling
combination of all three...This is a playful and provocative
collection, full of sly, deft turns of phrase and striking
imagery."" —Publishers Weekly
""Arndt tells stories that resemble handfuls of ribbons—vibrant,
overlapping, tangled, seemingly more middles than beginnings and
endings. . . . Arndt’s keen, wild stories are truly original, and
readers will hope for more." —Booklist
“Arndt’s vivid, rollicking stories represent a new kind of American
outlaw literature, of transgression and nonconformity and queerness
and heart, all told in a propulsive, original voice.” —Literary
Hub
"The stories and the characters within defy description and deal
with identity, gender dysphoria, and body dysmorphia. They’re
stories for anyone who refuses to conform, or struggles with a
changing personal narrative, to the point where even language can
barely express the way they feel. Often hallucinatory, sometimes
transgressive, usually queer, and always human, these stories about
bodies go straight for the heart." —Brit + Co
"Strange, smart, and probing... an important voice on timely
questions of the body politic."—Elle
Large Animals is in the bite.” —Justin Torres, author of We the
Animals
“Jess Arndt has crafted a queer uncanny, an eerily recognizable
landscape of dark magic and darker humor where the instability of
bodies, desire, relationships, and the self take on a supernatural
dimension. A tremendously exciting collection.” —Michelle Tea,
author of Black Wave
“Metamorphosis—of time, of space, of character—is exposed in every
playful sentence of Large Animals. Language will not be kept in its
form. Life, poetry, gender are always in the process of
transformation, and this fundamental condition is at the heart of
Jess Arndt’s stories. Large Animals is a strange and beautiful
must–read.” —Dorthe Nors, author of Karate Chop and So Much for
That Winter
"[Arndt's] stories don’t map with the intention of revealing a
destination, but rather at illuminating the nebulous territory that
precedes it." —The East Bay Review
"Jess Arndt’s writing is so strange and imaginative that it
provides release from the real world."—Dayna Evans, The Cut
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