Description

About the Author

Lydia Peelle was born in Boston. Her short stories have appeared in numerous publications and have won two Pushcart Prizes, an O. Henry Award, and been twice featured in Best New American Voices. She lives in Nashville, Tennessee.

Praise for Reasons for and Advantages of Breathing: Stories…

“Peelle’s stories in REASONS FOR AND ADVANTAGES OF BREATHING carry a memory of the Southern past that we might find in a short story by Flannery O’Connor or Eudora Welty.”
-BOMB Magazine

“Lydia Peelle’s lovely, fluid voice lures you into a world full of heartbreak and devastation.... calls to mind masters of the unsettling short story like Mary Gaitskill, or even Alice Munro. … [Peelle] has the makings of a writer who defies labels and creates her own categories.”
-New York Times Book Review

“With humor and insight, these sharply etched fictions illuminate turning points...in lives conscribed by limited horizons.... Peelle vividly evokes a setting and brings its inhabitants...instantly and convincingly to life.”
-Boston Globe

“[The stories] read like fully formed classics, as if Bob Dylan was rewriting the stories of Alice Munro. These are eight clear and precise gems, deeply rooted in Southern soil, and alive with every pore to heartbreak and possibility.”
-Louisville Courier Journal

“The eight stories in Lydia Peelle’s debut collection are remarkable for their clarity and precision. . . . artful...”
-BookForum

“Peelle writes her meaty characters with vigor and packs each tale with descriptions so subtly vibrant that they warrant multiple visits.”
-Publishers Weekly

“Rock-solid prose, surprising connections, and resounding transformations add up to powerful and significant stories of improvised life in a consumed world.”
-Booklist (starred review)

“An incredible collection of eight gorgeously crafted stories, with wonderfully drawn characters whose individual tales stay with you.”
-San Francisco Chronicle

“Peelle’s acute perception of a squandered world inspires complex, suspenseful stories that celebrate life’s endless improvisation and assertion....darkly lyrical, ironic and compassionate stories...brilliant and stunning.”
-Kansas City Star