Antonya Nelson Writes about Houston in the New Yorker

Antonya Nelson, one of our resident writer geniuses here in town, recently placed *another* story in the New Yorker, and it takes place in Houston! Get a load of that! The story is called "Shauntrelle." Here are the opening lines:

"It isn’t just a husband you divorce but a life. A credit rating. Certain friends—sadly, some of them small children. A mother-in-law, that innocent bystander. And sometimes it seemed to Constance that she had divorced her own pronoun, I, and run away with another, she. She, she sometimes thought, of herself, and always in the present tense. As in Has she disconnected from her past so completely?

She hadn’t, however, divorced her city. Houston was still hers, although this part of it was new to her."

It's a great story and she gets every detail right, down to the apartment complex, the stiletto heels, and of course the medical complex. It's a quick read and a total, knowing pleasure. Read the full text here.

Antonya Nelson is the award-winning author of three novels and four short story collections. Her stories have appeared in The New Yorker, Harper's, and The Best American Short Stories. Her books have been New York Times Notable Books of 1992, 1996, 1998, 2000, and 2002. She was named in 1999 by The New Yorker as one of the "twenty young fiction writers for the new millennium." She is also the recipient of an National Endowment for the Arts grant and 2000-2001 Guggenheim Fellowship. In Houston, she shares, with her husband novelist Robert Boswell, the Cullen Chair in Creative Writing at the University of Houston. She's also recently started writing a column in Texas Monthly, where she's applied her smart and clear-eyed writing to such subjects as her dogs and her tattoo.

Pick up a book of hers and find out why she's been showered with accolades for the past fifteen years!

COLOR PHOTOGRAPH: CINDY SHERMAN, “UNTITLED #400” (2000)/COURTESY METRO PICTURES
Photograph of Antonya Nelson by Michael O'Neill