Author Description

A gracefully disconcerting collection of stories by the winner of the 2005 Narrative Prize. Wavering between fidelity and freedom, the women in this sparkling debut deal with emotional damage and unhealed heartbreak by plunging into unusual, often bizarre, relationships. Praise for FAMOUS FATHERS & OTHER STORIES “Pia Z’s stories will break your heart in the best way imaginable. I actually gasped aloud several times while reading this astonishing collection—it’s that brave, that funny, that shocking, that good.” —KAREN RUSSELL author of St. Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves “Pia Z. Ehrhardt’s Famous Fathers is a stunning first collection. The stories charm and tease and threaten with equal fervor....To read them is to be seduced, at night and in the slanting rain, in a new city, over quiet water, by the woman of your dreams.” FREDERICK BARTHELME author of Moon Deluxe and Elroy Nights “Pia Ehrhardt’s tender and funny stories are filled with passionate women just barely bottled up by their everyday responsibilities: busy-hearted wives and mothers who may find themselves surprised by love or their own resiliency but who never doubted for a moment the intensity of their desire to touch the world.” JIM SHEPARD author of Project X and Love and Hydrogen: New and Collected Stories “Pia Ehrhardt’s compassion for the sorrows of love springs from a sensuous heart and a mind quickened to truth. Her stories travel the road of desire, with a generosity of wit that makes a reader eager, a bit breathless, and in the end grateful for the journey.” TOM JENKS editor, Narrative Magazine