Danielle Lazarin’s short stories have won grants from New York Foundation for the Arts and the Northern Manhattan Arts Alliance, the Glimmer Train Family Matters Award, and Hopwood Awards. She is a graduate of the writing programs of Oberlin College and the University of Michigan’s Helen Zell Writers’ Program. She lives in her native New York City with her husband and daughters.
NPR: Best Books of 2018
The Millions: The Great 2018 Book Preview
Esquire: The Best Books of 2018 (So Far)
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February
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Wait to Read
Vulture: 7 New Books You Need to Read This February
Bustle: The 15 Best Fiction Books Coming Out in February
2018
Refinery29: The Best Books Of February Are All Right Here
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Nylon: The 10 Best Books To Read This February
PopSugar: The 20 Best New Books to Read in February
Thrillist: Best Books of 2018 (So Far)
Dazed: Five Weird and Wonderful New Short Story Collections
You Should Be Reading
Library Journal: New Writers To Watch
MyDomaine: The 20 Best Books of 2018
Vol.1 Brooklyn: February 2018 Book Preview
Jetsetter: 8 Books to Add to Your February Reading List
“Beautifully crafted . . . the sentences in these stories are
living and seamless, as if Lazarin had run her hand over them until
they became smooth and gleaming with the evidence of her touch. Yet
they are not without viscera; sublimated rage fills the crevices
between them. . . . These stories hand their warnings to us: Don’t
be pleasant or easy to touch. Look mean for the camera. Just get up
and go.”
—Carmen Maria Machado, The New York Times Book Review
“Intimate short stories . . . exploring the mixed blessing of human
entanglement.”
—New York Magazine
“Danielle Lazarin’s first story collection, Back Talk, is a marvel
of its kind, and it’s marvelous precisely in its Munrovian
shiftiness, its ability to bend form and turn the story into
something that is temporally and emotionally elastic.”
—San Francisco Chronicle
“Terrific.”
—Chicago Tribune
“This is the collection to read if you're hungering for the stories
of women who subvert, who flick at the misogyny that surrounds
them. I found myself shouting in recognition as Danielle Lazarin's
expertly crafted characters extricate themselves from hostile
relationships or snatch back the power that has been taken from
them. Lazarin has a talent for crafting dynamics that are so real;
the friendships, the families, the insidious ways women are
undermined is all on display. Reading her work, and seeing her
characters take up—and sometimes win—the fights I know so well is
like taking sips of an antidote for the many things that afflict us
women.”
—NPR’s Best Books of 2018, Kat Chow, reporter, Code Switch
“Long live the short story, as long as writers like Lazarin are
here to keep the form fresh. . . . Short stories are like sideways
glances or overheard whispers that become more, and Lazarin makes
us believe there’s worth in stories that we can steal moments to
experience.”
—The Millions
“[Danielle Lazarin] has the rare ability to evoke an entire
ecosystem of human behavior—replete with decades of slights and
longings—in just a few pages. The word ‘haunting’ is so often
overused, but in this case, it is an accurate description of how
these stories, set between New York and Paris, maneuver their way
into your thoughts long after reading.”
—Esquire
“This fantastic debut short story collection is filled with
excellent stories of women and girls, centering on their lives in a
way that feels refreshingly real. If you couldn't get enough
of ‘Cat Person,’ this collection should be next on your
list. . . . [Back Talk] examines how narrowly our culture
allows women to express their desires through stories that are all
about women’s hidden yearnings, and the unexpected ways they
surface.”
—Bustle
“[An] excellent short story collection . . . Lazarin’s trove
of protagonists, ranging in age, circumstance, and city, will speak
to a different part of you.”
—Refinery29
“At a critical moment in feminist history, Lazarin’s intimate
stories find women of almost all ages exploring the essence of
freedom and the mixed blessing of human entanglement.”
—Vulture
“[A] confident, powerfully written debut collection . . .
Lazarin’s themes stand out starkly: women, the ways they define
themselves, and the ways they relate to one another.”
—Harper’s Bazaar
“I'm always up for a story collection that centers fully around
women. . . . Lazarin [celebrates] the inherent complications of
being a woman, and of being alive.”
—Nylon
“In this powerful debut, Lazarin has written her heart out
chronicling the lives of recognizable girls and women as they come
of age, find their footing and chart their path through life’s
curves, on their own terms. She takes the reader into the crevices
and corners of these women’s minds, where you can accompany them on
their daydreams as they leave or enter relationships, or just
generally try to figure it all out. Their voices stay with you long
after the final story.”
—The Rumpus
“Through sixteen affecting short stories, Danielle Lazarin delivers
a powerful look at the moments that define relationships. It’s a
phenomenal debut.”
—HelloGiggles
“Back Talk is full of stories that make you feel
uncomfortable, but that also push you to look at the ways in which
the world controls and guards girls.”
—Dazed
“Together, [these stories] leave you with a sense of crystalline
fragments, sharp-edged shards of stories and experiences that paint
a fractured picture of life as a woman and a girl. . . . At the
center are always Lazarin’s vibrant, peculiar, brilliant girls and
women navigating getting what they want in the world. This is a
powerful and tender collection.”
—Thrillist
“Grief, love, wariness, empathy, the confusions of simply being a
woman—these are emotions that most of us feel but sometimes find
difficult to express. Lazarin gives us the tools to do just
that.”
—Oprah.com
“Back Talk is the ultimate collection of stories centered on
the experience of women and girls—and we can't recommend it highly
enough.”
—PopSugar
“I’d say remember the name Danielle Lazarin, but if you read her
first collection of short fiction, there’s no danger you’ll forget
it. In Back Talk, her tales of the inner lives of girls and
young women are nothing short of revelatory.”
—BookPage
“Back Talk by Danielle Lazarin is the gateway book to my
full-on 2018 obsession with short stories. Lazarin writes such
subtle, quiet tales with remarkable empathy, insight, and
integrity. When I read her book, I finally began to ask myself the
most important question I encountered in 2018: How do women operate
in this world? I think Lazarin has an unparalleled ability to write
about tiny, generally unseen occurrences that, in the moment of
that particular woman's life, are difficult to identify, but are
actually the core relationships/experiences/feelings that end up
changing the course of their internal and external life
experiences.”
—MyDomaine, Payton Turner, Girls at Library
“Some of the writing does, rightly, remind one of Alice Munro’s
work, particularly due to the focus on the lives of girls and
women. But mostly, it's strikingly reminiscent of Melissa
Bank’s The Girl’s Guide to Hunting and Fishing. . . .
A noteworthy debut collection [that] showcases a writer with
much promise; one who is not afraid to give voice to facets of
womanhood that our socio-cultural conditioning, for both men and
women, teaches us to avoid or ignore. And, by giving us an honest,
unabashed language for these facets, it also enables us to
reconsider the arcs of our own lives and those of other women
around us with a closer scrutiny.”
—PopMatters
“In the wake of the widespread #MeToo movement, this powerful short
story collection could not be more well-timed. A multitude of
characters are introduced throughout Back Talk . . . but
their tales, however different, are thematically the same: strong
female voices and lives and the way in which they connect with each
another.”
—Jetsetter
“In this collection of stories, Danielle Lazarin ventures into a
host of lives in a variety of settings, and explores questions of
grief, the emotional toll we can expect from others, and the
unexpected ways that we do (or do not) connect with those around
us. It’s powerful stuff, handled in unexpected ways.”
—Vol.1 Brooklyn
“Lazarin’s exceptional debut collection digs deep into the lives of
women, telling complex stories of loss, hope, and joy. . . . [Back
Talk] is confident and exhilarating; this auspicious collection is
uniformly excellent.”
—Publishers Weekly (starred review)
“Brilliant and tender . . . With poignant imagery and a fresh
voice, Lazarin portrays these women honestly and relatably. Her
exceptional craftsmanship speaks to the heart, as she paints these
tales with empathy and a compassion that extends to all
humankind.”
—Booklist (starred review)
“Sensitive, intricate, and quietly powerful, Lazarin's stories give
voice to women learning to live on their own terms.”
—Kirkus (starred review)
“Danielle Lazarin’s Back Talk is deceptively quiet but packs a
powerful punch—much like the girls and women in its pages. The
stories in this collection batter at the boundaries of female
desire—not just for sex, but for intimacy, for visibility, for
agency. They talk back to the idea that stories about women are
‘domestic,’ burrowing deep to find wildness and a smoldering fury
beneath. The best collection I’ve read in years, from a phenomenal
new talent.”
—Celeste Ng, New York Times bestselling author of Little
Fires Everywhere
“The stories in Back Talk are not only fierce and unflinching in
their clear-eyed portrayal of women and girls, they are also tender
and compassionate, imbued with a deep longing. Lazarin is a
sophisticated writer and her remarkable debut offers us subtle but
profound truths about growing up, moving forward, and finding
ourselves.”
—Edan Lepucki, New York Times bestselling author of California
“I fell in love with these elegant, beguiling tales. They’re about
young women, but they are for everyone, whatever gender, whatever
age, so universal is their poignant take on life and loving and
loneliness, too. Reading Lazarin's writing is like having a great
friend in the room, telling you something that you know you need to
hear, and telling it to you brilliantly.”
—Robin Black, nationally bestselling author of Life
Drawing
“These are wonderful stories—sparkling, witty, and tender, riding
that sweet spot between urbane and vulnerable, between
hilarity and heartbreak—all those impossible contradictions that
remind us of what love is like. Lazarin’s astonishing insight
and craftsmanship put me in mind of short story masters like
Beattie and Baxter. I think she’s destined for the big
leagues.”
—Dan Chaon, New York Times bestselling author of Ill Will
“Back Talk offers a kaleidoscopic portrait of the contemporary
family in a state of creative destruction, flying apart and
simultaneously reconstituting itself in new forms. Danielle Lazarin
guides us through the varied permutations of her extended, blended
families with insightful wit, surpassing empathy and wry
wisdom.”
—Peter Ho Davies, author of The Fortunes
“Misfits and mess-ups, dreamers and delinquents, kids chafing at
adolescence and adults failing at parenthood—it’s easy to see
yourself in Danielle Lazarin’s characters. But these stories, like
all good stories, aren't a mirror: they're a window that shows us
the whole world.”
—Rumaan Alam, author of Rich and Pretty
“I absolutely loved this book—from the first page to the last, this
collection is stunning for its insight into the lives of young
women, revelatory for its finely tuned prose, and unforgettable for
its humor and tenderness. I will return to these stories again and
again. I envy the reader who gets to discover Danielle Lazarin’s
work.”
—Julie Buntin, author of Marlena
“Smart, sharp, well-paced stories—worlds of their own that circle
life and loss with humor, wit, and sparkling intelligence.”
—Megan Mayhew Bergman, author of Birds of a Lesser Paradise and
Almost Famous Women
“Thank God, a collection of stories about women who don't hate
themselves, don't hate other women, don't hate their bodies, don't
hate their husbands, or even their ex-husbands, don't hate their
sisters, their mothers, their fathers, their children. Women who
sometimes choose to have sex and sometimes choose not to. Women who
are simply, like me, trying to figure out what it means to be
alive, to be in love, to be daughters, parents, siblings, wives,
citizens, human beings. I hope Danielle Lazarin writes a million
more stories like the ones in Back Talk so I can keep reading her
work forever.”
—Eileen Pollack, author of A Perfect Life
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