The Indefinite State of Imaginary Morals by Rae Bryant

“Rae Bryant’s stories yank at you over and over, desperate to give you the clue you never had and to point you, by what’s left out, to a spot on this good earth where the heart might flourish. Getting there is your business, she seems to say, and she doesn’t hold out much hope of your arrival, or of hers. Is it fun? Not so much. Is it necessary? Absolutely.” Frederick Barthelme

“Rae Bryant’s fiction is smart and sexy and post-feminist and dangerous and akin to doing the tango with a succubus.  Do you feel lucky? Part Hannah Tinti, part Kim Addonizio—with enough intense characters, flashy dreams, and edgy visions to entangle your heart and skull for eons. Bite into these thorny stories, before they sink their teeth into you.” —Richard Peabody, Editor, Gargoyle Magazine

“Reading Rae Bryant can be a harrowing experience; hers is a harsh world without wrong or right. But as you make your way through, pains and pleasures meet and build, until it’s like drowning in a lake of silver light.” —Ben Loory, Author of Stories for Nighttime and Some for the Day and “The TV,” The New Yorker

Rae Bryant’s fiction is rich with sensual detail, its surface clamoring for our attention like the glamoured skin of a new lover, everything fresh, everything undulled by long familiarity. And what waits beneath, begging to be revealed? Perhaps a writer striking poses, alternately a seductress, a tease, a joker, or perhaps a trickster: for while Bryant is always sure to show us a good time, there comes a sense that sometimes she’s making us laugh just so we don’t notice what else she’s doing, the way her fingernails dig deeply at our freshest wounds, aiming to free the many splinters stuck beneath our skin, and also that oh so good pain waiting just below. —Matt Bell, author of How They Were Found

“Addictive; the rawness, messiness, unattractive infection of love that can cause a woman to gnaw off her arm to sneak away from her sleeping lover. It’s no surprise to find, among these stories, a new Wonder Woman, with a whip. Ah, you say: of course.” —Karen Heuler, author of Journey to Bom Goody, recipient of the O’Henry Award

“Will make you simultaneously laugh and cringe at the squeamish awkwardness of post-one night stand intimacies…witty…strangely fantastical and familiar.”—Flavorpill

“If I had to describe Rae Bryant’s collection The Indefinite State of Imaginary Morals in two words, the words would be these: damn impressive.” —Outsider Writers Collective and Press

The Indefinite State of Imaginary Morals commands attention. Bryant’s observations on the arcana of the mundane—life, sex, a sense of being—are matched only by her ability to render them strange. Alternatively lyrical and minimal, these stories exemplify the capabilities of the literary weird mode. A must read for any student of post-millennial fiction.” —Darin Bradley, Author of Noise

“Bryant creates a vivid portrayal of what it means to be human, in its gritty glory.” —Weave Magazine

“A distinctive collection that’s imaginative and compelling. These stories show the enormous talent of Rae Bryant beginning to take hold.” —Tim Wendel, author of Castro’s Curveball and High Heat

“Deadpan, visceral, sharply funny.” —Julie Innis

“A new genealogy of morals… a madcap ride through a land of errant desire and lost time.” —Gary Percesepe, editor, BLIP Magazine (formerly Mississippi Review)

“Sweetly erotic without going over the top.” —Jared Randall, Apocryphal Road Code

Innovative, daring, original writing.” —Kathy Fish, author of A Peculiar Feeling of Restlessness

places published . . .

Patasola Press, NY

The Indefinite State of Imaginary Morals: A Collection of Stories. Patasola Press, NY. June 2011. Editor and Closed Panel Nominations for Pushcarts, Pen/Hemingway and Pen Emerging Awards.

Selected Short Fiction, Essays, Poetry & Intermedia

“Gynecology and Abdominal Surgery: A Redacted Story of a Woman’s Body.” DIAGRAM

“An Open Letter to the Pulitzer Board.” The Missouri Review.

“The Trending Infection: An Open Letter to Mark Oppenheimer and The New Republic.” The Missouri Review

“If the National Book Awards 2013 Were a Star Wars Remake.” Huffington Post

“Anorgasmia, Love and Something Wrong with Her: A Discussion with Cris Mazza.” Huffington Post.

“Stochasticism, Ambition and John Cage: A Discussion with Rick Moody.” Huffington Post.

“Cherry Wollstonecraft and Justine Luscious Save the World.” Have a NYC: New York Short Stories, Three Rooms Press.

“A Love Letter to Steven Tyler’s Lips.” Gargoyle Magazine.

 “In the Buff: Literary Readings, Pasties and Jiggling Genitalia.” The Paris Review.

“The Cutting Down is a Conceit.” Redivider.

“Piglets.” Matter: The Journal of Compressed Creative Arts.

This is My Rape. Writing on It All.

“To Naomi Wolf and Other Strange Women Who Speak for and/or about My Vagina as If It Were a Political Party.” The Nervous Breakdown.

“Leopard. Lion. She-Wolf.” Wag’s Revue.

“Is It Fun? Not So Much. Is It Necessary? Absolutely.” & Disembodied. Wieden+Kennedy’s American Dreamers.

“An Open Letter to a Suicidal Friend, a Bulimic Friend, a Long Lost Aunt, and Stephanie, Your New Linked In Connection,” McSweeney’s Internet Tendency.

“Adrien Brody, Adrien Brody, and Adrien Brody’s Nose: Critical Essay on Pop Culture, Technology and Lacanian Conceit in Literature.” The Nervous Breakdown.

“Mentors Gone Bad.” Portland Book Review.

“Rae Bryant Ponders Nabokov’s Signs & Symbols,” Beatrice.com.

“My First New York Rooftop Party.” The Quivering Pen.

“The Art of Truncation.” Ampersand Review (Multimedia), 2011.

“Coffined.” Ampersand Review (Multimedia), 2011.

“Capture Escape.” Willows Wept Review (Poetry), Fall 2010.

“Pomegranate Kiss.” The Shine Journal (Poetry), Fall 2009.

“Good Girl,” Story Quarterly.

“The Collective Unconscious of Genitalia, Annie Hall, and Coffee Cups,” Stymie Magazine: The Feminist Perspective.

Featured Author: [disemBody Words], Short, Fast and Deadly: May 2012 (Pushcart Nomination).

“The Art of Truncation,” Ampersand Review.

“Coffined,” Ampersand Review.

“Skin” (Excerpted from Marrow, a novel in progress), Amazing Graces, an anthology from Paycock Press.

“Untitled,” En(Un)Gender Me, an anthology from PS Books, a division of Philadelphia Stories.

“Pop Modern Genesis,” Gargoyle Magazine.

“Stage Play in Five Acts of Her: Matinee,” Big Muddy (Reprint).

“The Indefinite State of Imaginary Morals, Relatives and Gin,” New World Writing.

“[Jeezus] Changed My Oil Today,” Opium Magazine.

Emperatriz de la Orilla del Río,” PANK.

“Solipsy Street,” Metazen.

“All You Bad Sinners,” decomP.

 “Postfeminist Zombie Assassins Wear Wonder Woman Underoos,” The Medulla Review.

“Featherbedding,” >kill author, Issue 8: The Vladimir Nabokov Issue.

“Stage Play in Five Acts of Her: Matinee,” New World Writing.

“Chinchillas in the Air,” Annalemma.

“Collecting Calliope,” Weave Magazine , Issue 4.

“Paddlehead,” Caper Literary Journal.

“Buttercrisp,” Pear Noir!, Issue 4.

“Monk Man and Moonshine,” Menda City Review.

“Stiletto Dance,” Foundling Review.

“Fifty Years in Halves,” Word Riot.

 “Fly Fishing in Neoprene Legs,” Foliate Oak Literary Magazine.

“Everything’s Better with Pesto,” Staccato.

“Intolerable Impositions,” Bartleby Snopes.

“Street Red,” Writer’s Bloc (Rutgers-Camden).

“I Keep a Vine Woven Basket by the Front Door,” A capella Zoo, Issue 4.

 “Sublimity in Turquoise Blue,” Farrago’s Wainscot.

“A Clockpunk Micro,” Thaumatrope.

“The Peregrine and the Mermaid,” Southern Fried Weirdness.

“Taboos and Tropes: Rhetoric and Writing about Rape.” FM

“A History of Bloody Point, St. Christopher’s Island (1626)” Whidbey Writers’ Award, First Place. 

Selected Reviews and Critical Essays

“Tenth of December by George Saunders.” Washington Independent Review of Books. 2013.

“Daddy Love by Joyce Carol Oates.” New York Journal of Books. 2013.

“Prosperous Friends by Christine Schutt. New York Journal of Books. 2012.

What May Have Been by Gary Percesepe and Susan Tepper.” Puerto del Sol. Spring 2011.

“Rae Bryant on Elaine Chiew.” Kill Author. August 2010.

“Going Green.” Literary Traveler. Summer Issue 2009.

“Psychological Methods to Sell Should Be Destroyed.” The Fix, June 2008.

about rae bryant

Rae Bryant is the author of the short story collection, The Indefinite State of Imaginary Morals. Her stories, essays, and poetry have appeared in print and online at The Paris ReviewThe Missouri Review, McSweeney’s, DIAGRAM, North American Review, Gargoyle and more. Her fiction and creative nonfiction have won prizes, scholarships and fellowships from Johns Hopkins, American University, Aspen Writers Foundation and North American Review among others. She earned an M.A. in Writing from Johns Hopkins and an M.F.A. in Fiction and Creative Nonfiction from American University, where she was the recipient of the Starr and Sartwell scholarships. She is the founding editor of Eckleburg and is represented by Jennifer Carlson with Dunow, Carlson & Lerner Literary Agency.

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