Rita Bullwinkel: Belly Up

This first collection presents stories from nowhere—they invent where they’re from, with constant surprises stemming from everyday banality. Bewildered imagination finds a home in the stories of Rita Bullwinkel. Her writing is beautiful and poetic, funny, strange, heartbreaking and wise. Her characters discover the accidental splendors of life, and aren’t in charge of where their stories go. Bullwinkel discusses being delighted by writing a world to live in. She reads one of her shortest stories, “Nave,” and samples from her longest story, a dazzling story with masterful writing, “What I Would Be If I Wasn’t What I Am.”

Photos by Christopher Ho.