Janet Mitchell
The Creepy Girl - $18
THE CREEPY GIRL and other stories
Winner of the 5th Starcherone Prize for Innovative Fiction.
At turns funny, heartfelt, and wise, The Creepy Girl gives us
15 stories, remarkable in their variety, about families and childhood, small
towns and prophets, boys and girls, life and death. In every story, the
exuberant, playful language of Janet Mitchell's debut continually surprises.
"Janet Mitchell writes sudden, severe, disturbing stories that capture
the reader in a kind of choke hold, and The Creepy Girl, her debut
collection, is a work of outrageous, much-needed literary ambition. Mitchell
is hell-bent on extracting every last drop of sadness and pain from her
sentences."
- Ben Marcus, author of Notable American Women,
a novel
"These energizing, sparklingly imaginative, at time visionary stories
— one about a woman who wants her mother stuffed and made pretty when
she dies; others about mysterious metalogical creatures — form a necklace
of deceptively childlike voices moving through an avant-gothic cosmos. But
they are as much, if not more, about the beauties of surprising, rhythmic
prose, as well, the syllabic stuff you can taste on the tongue."
-Lance Olsen, Final Judge, 5th Starcherone Fiction Prize
"These stories are a lot like dreams: wonderfully strange and disquieting,
very funny when you least expect it, and chock-full of complexities to mine.
They are also beautifully rendered, highly entertaining, and original. The
Creepy Girl and other stories is an exciting debut collection, and
Janet Mitchell is a laudable writer."
- Binnie Kirschenbaum, author of An Almost Perfect
Moment
photo by Lisa Bevis JANET MITCHELL received
her Master of Fine Arts in Fiction from Columbia University, where she was
the Bingham Scholarship recipient. She won the Hob Broun Prize for her fiction,
and her short stories have appeared in The Quarterly
and The Brooklyn Rail, among other
venues. She earned her Master of Fine Arts in Film Production at USC, where
she won the John Huston Award for her directing and a Paramount Pictures
Fellowship for her writing. Her work as a writer-director includes the award-winning
short film “How Does Anyone Get Old?” starring Mark Ruffalo, Mina Badie,
Gregg Rainwater, and Melissa Lechner. She was born and raised in South Jersey.
Contact: Ted Pelton, Editor, Starcherone Books, P.O. Box 303, Buffalo,
NY 14201
Phone: 716-885-2726. Fax: 716-884-0291. E-mail: ted@starcherone.com
PUBLICATION DATE: October 1, 2009
PRICE: $18.00; 168 pp
ISBN: 978-0-9788811-7-7
PRINT RUN: 3000