Danielle Dutton’s previous works include the story collection ATTEMPTS AT A LIFE and an experimental novel, SPRAWL, a finalist for the Believer Book Award in 2011. Dutton is active in many parts of the literary community, notably as the founder of the publishing house Dorothy, which—for its impressive list and as well as innovative book design—has attracted the attention of The New York Times Book Review, The Paris Review, Elle, Poets & Writers, Kirkus, and BOMB. She teaches fiction on the permanent faculty at Washington University in St. Louis, alongside Kathryn Davis, Carl Phillips, and Mary Jo Bang.
Coffee House Press, 2024
PRAIRIE, DRESSES, ART, OTHER
Danielle Dutton’s work has been praised as “strikingly smart and daringly feminist” (Jenny Offill) and “beguiling” (The Wall Street Journal), and the 15 pieces in this collection cement her place as one of the most original voices writing today. With the thrilling idiosyncrasy of writers like Kate Zambreno and Amina Cain, and the astounding concision of Lydia Davis, Danielle’s collection PRAIRIE, DRESSES, ART, OTHER is made up of four distinct parts that both contrast and echo one another, challenging our expectations and pushing the limits of the dream-like worlds and moods that language might create. All, as Danielle writes, embrace “the idea of writing with eyes open and with other media and other forms in mind.”
Replete with wildflowers, ominous rivers, and fireflies, the first section, Prairie, encompasses a cycle of five stories set in the Midwest. Tonally conversant, they mine themes of family, virtual reality, art, loss, nature, and fear. Originally published in Fence, the second part, Dresses, circles a collection of dresses taken from literary sources, like a wild literary closet. The third section, Art, is an imaginative illustrated essay about fiction and visual art and ekphrasis; that is, the written description of a work of art. And in the final part, Other, Dutton offers an assemblage of short and often comical stories about writing and reading and sex. Simultaneously unnerving and beautiful, pieces from this collection have been published in The Paris Review, The White Review, and Conjunctions, and online at Guernica and The New Yorker.
MARGARET THE FIRST
“The duchess herself would be delighted at her resurrection in Margaret the First . . . Dutton surprisingly and delightfully offers not just a remarkable duchess but also an intriguing dissection of an unusually bountiful partnership of (almost) equals.”
—Katharine Grant, New York Times Book Review
*A Boston Globe “Pick of the Week”*
*An “Indie Next” Pick for March 2016*
*A Vanity Fair “Hot Type” Pick for March 2016*
*A BBC Pick for one of “9 Books to Read in March”*
*A Publishers Weekly “Pick of the Week” for 3/14/16*
*One of The Millions’ “Most Anticipated Books of 2016″*
*One of Flavorwire’s “50 Most Anticipated Books of 2016”
and “10 Must-Read Books for March”*
*LitHub’s “23 Books to Be Excited For in March”*
and “5 Books Making the News this Week”*
*An Entropy “Best Fiction Books of 2016″*
MARGARET THE FIRST is based on seventeenth-century writer and polymath Margaret Cavendish, one of the first women to be published and a notoriously audacious and polarizing figure in her day.
As one of the Queen’s attendants and the daughter of prominent Royalists, Margaret was exiled at the overthrow of King Charles I in 1642. As the English Civil War raged on, Margaret spent the interregnum period in France and Belgium, marrying William Cavendish, 1st Duke of Newcastle-upon-Tyne. In sharp, stylized prose Dutton opens the private sphere of this odd and fascinating woman, her drive to write, and the singular marriage that enabled her success. Returning to England ten years later as a celebrated author, Cavendish was the first woman ever invited to the Royal Society of London, and the last for another 200 years.