Bryan Hurt

Fiction. An astronaut quits NASA to paint pictures of the moon; a man builds a star in his basement; an astronomer falls in love with a moose and loses his nose in a sword fight; and an aristocrat adopts two teenage girls in the hopes of raising one to become his perfect wife. Bryan Hurt's stories depict a world of wonder, magic, humor, sadness, and compassion. Wildly imaginative and meticulously researched, EVERYONE WANTS TO BE AMBASSADOR TO FRANCE is the debut of a new and exciting talent. "The breadth of this collection is a phenomenal celebration, and catalog of possibility, for the infinite versatility of short-form writing. Hurt's fabulist imagination, wickedly dry humor, and core emotional truths challenge, dazzle, and ignite." Alissa Nutting "I have been a longtime fan of Bryan Hurt's stories and what a joy to have them all together now in this book! They are a soup pot of the funniest dry sentences plus unusual facts that he unearthed from who knows where, and an understated humanity tucked inside those facts, and a constant eye on the oddness of culture and the lilt of a well-placed phrase and a carrot. In our endlessly data-packed world, Hurt's keen spareness is a welcome addition to the bookshelves." Aimee Bender "The fictional love child of Miranda July, George Saunders, and A.M Holmes, Hurt's debut collection combines farfetchedness and dark humor with just enough tenderness to make everything feel true." Courtney Maum "Bryan Hurt's stories are like no one else's. They are by turns hilarious, whimsical, arresting and heartbreaking, but what makes them such a delight is the sly simplicity and off-handed charm of their telling." T. C. Boyle"

Everyone Wants to Be Ambassador to France

"Including work by literary heavy-hitters... the anthology considers the act and weight of watching and being watched... and in Watchlist, these see-to-know quests range from funny to terrifying." âe*Los Angeles MagazineIn Watchlist, some of today's most prominent and promising fiction writers from around the globe respond to, meditate on, and mine for inspiration the surveillance culture in which we live. With contributions from Etgar Keret, T.C. Boyle, Robert Coover, Aimee Bender, Jim Shepard, Alissa Nutting, Charles Yu, Cory Doctorow, and many more, WATCHLIST unforgettably confronts the question: What does it mean to be watched?In Doctorow's eerily plausible "Scroogled," the US has outsourced border control to Google, on the basis that they Do Search Right. In Lincoln Michel's "Our New Neighborhood," a planned suburban community's 'Neighborhood Watch' program becomes an obsessive nightmare. Jim Shepard's haunting "Safety Tips for Living Alone" imagines the lives of the men involved in the US government's fatal attempt to build the three Texas Tower radar facilities in the Atlantic Ocean during the Cold War. Randa Jarrar's "Testimony of Malik, Israeli agent #287690" is "a sweet and deftly handled story of xenophobia and paranoia, reminding us that such things aren't limited to the West" (Sabotage Reviews) and Alissa Nutting's "The Transparency Project" is a creative, speculative exploration of the future of long-term medical observation.By turns political, apolitical, cautionary, and surreal, these stories reflect on what it's like to live in the surveillance state.

32 Stories by Persons of Interest

Watchlist

“The fictional love child of Miranda July, George Saunders, and A.M. Homes . . . dark humor with just enough tenderness to make everything feel true.” ―Courtney Maum, author of I Am Having So Much Fun Here Without You A seagull, a goat, and a teenage boy enter into a bizarre love triangle that leaves one of them dead and the other two changed forever. A grief-stricken astronaut quits NASA to paint pictures of the moon. An eighteenth-century British aristocrat adopts two teenage girls and absconds with them to France, determined to raise one of them to become his perfect wife. By turns humorous and heartbreaking, this debut collection offers weird and wonderful stories that illuminate the hidden truths of life. “I have been a longtime fan of Bryan Hurt’s stories and what a joy to have them all together now in this book! They are a soup pot of the funniest dry sentences plus unusual facts that he unearthed from who knows where, and an unstated humanity tucked inside those facts, and a constant eye on the oddness of culture and the lilt of a well-placed phrase and a carrot. In our endlessly data-packed world, Hurt’s keen sparseness is a welcome addition to the bookshelves.” ―Aimee Bender, New York Times–bestselling author of The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake “Bryan Hurt’s stories are like no one else’s. They are by turns hilarious, whimsical, arresting, and heartbreaking, but what makes them such a delight is the sly simplicity and off-handed charm of their telling.” ―T.C. Boyle, New York Times–bestselling author of The Tortilla Curtain Winner of the Starcherone Prize for Innovative Fiction

Bryan Hurt

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