Nicole Haroutunian's short fiction has appeared in the Literarian, Tin House Flash Fridays, Vol. 1 Brooklyn, Two Serious Ladies, and other publications. Her short story Youse was the winner of the Center for Fiction's 2013 Short Story Contest. She is coeditor of the digital arts journal Underwater New York, works as a museum educator, and lives with her husband in Woodside, Queens. Her first story collection, Speed Dreaming, will be published by Little A in the spring of 2015.
“A bowler hat, a volleyball net, a pig tattoo: Nicole Haroutunian’s
stories all have unexpected details that attract the eye and alert
the mind. Those details glitter on the surface while something else
entirely goes on underneath: dark tides of life, death, illness,
and love, and people who are carried away by them during the course
of otherwise normal lives.” —Ben Greenman, author of The Slippage
and Mo Meta Blues
“Nicole Haroutunian is a master of excavating what is ominous and
therefore worthy of examination in our everyday lives—sleepover
games, damaged bodies, dying cities, Brooklyn parrots, and the
prosaic catastrophes of love. I loved reading these perfectly
formed stories about thoughtful urbanites and their search for
meaning in the mundane.” —Amy Shearn, author of The Mermaid of
Brooklyn and How Far Is The Ocean from Here
“Haroutunian’s breezy prose, and her characters’ humor and
relatability—even when dealing with a recently-paralyzed boyfriend,
a rocky new marriage, or a father’s recent death—makes reading this
captivating collection a true joy.” —Bustle, Best Books of
March
“Speed Dreaming is a book spilling over with talent. How enticing
and accurately drawn these stories are, with their bright touches
and ominous edges, their smart young characters blocked by what
they can’t see yet. A wonderful debut.” —Joan Silber, author of
Fools and Ideas of Heaven
“An unforgettable portrait of what it’s like to be a young woman in
contemporary America...A beautiful, funny, and unflinching
collection.” —Saïd Sayrafiezadeh, author of Brief Encounters With
the Enemy
“The characters who appear (and reappear) in Speed Dreaming are
full of intelligence, wit, and empathy—as well as regret,
fickleness, and occasional selfishness. In other words, they are
wholly human. With unbelievable precision and grace, Nicole
Haroutunian examines the exquisite, transcendent, and inexplicably
eerie moments of her characters’ everyday lives and gives meaning
to the smallest details of their worlds. Speed Dreaming is
unforgettable.” —Nelly Reifler, author of Elect H. Mouse State
Judge
“Nicole Haroutunian’s stories are precise little gems. I know I’ll
return to them again and again, since there’s something new and
beautiful to find in them every time I open this collection.”
—Lauren Grodstein, author of The Explanation for Everything
“These passionate stories of women and their half disasters,
half-rotten men, and fully open hearts are written so nimbly and
with such energy and momentum and compassion that I found myself
carrying the book from room to room, brushing my teeth and feeding
the dog while reading, unwilling to put them down.” —Deb Olin
Unferth, author of Revolution: The Year I Fell in Love and Went to
Join the War
“Fire, accidents, mysterious disease, and a coyote at a child’s
birthday party are only some of the calamities that these
protagonists must confront, along with the minor indignities and
incongruities of romance and work. Haroutunian brings her
complicated young women to life with utter literary confidence. A
splendid debut.” —Melvin Jules Bukiet, author of Undertown and A
Faker’s Dozen
“These honest and perceptive stories contend with the painful
contradictions of modern love; that it is precious as it is
quotidian; inadequate as it is essential.” —Julie Sarkissian,
author of Dear Lucy
“Though the stories in Nicole Haroutunian’s debut collection are
entirely fictional, things still get too real: friendships are
pitted against marriages, a couple’s belongings disappear in a
fire, an end date is placed on a life, and two young girls face an
imminent kidnapping. Urgent and frantic, there’s plenty more speed
within the pages of this book.” —Refinery29
“Haroutunian is smart about contemporary relationships, and her
collection will certainly resonate with the Modern Love crowd. Her
protagonists, all women, admit to melodrama, but they go one step
further than the characters in Girls in that they question what’s
behind their woe-is-me antics.” —The Paris Review Blog, Staff Pick
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