Things I Want Back from You - Paperback

by Elizabeth Stix (Author)

Set in the fictional California town of San Encanto - a place where suburban angst coexists with the astonishing - a lonely wife finds her oppressive husband has become a dirigible who follows her from the sky, a neglected boy spends his summer unwinding a parasitic Guinea worm from his little sister's belly, and an aspiring life coach attends a self-actualization seminar that goes wildly off the rails. In Things I Want Back From You, Elizabeth Stix's hilarious and poignant debut of 20 linked stories, hopelessly flawed characters flail against their own insecurities, seeking one true moment of connection, and if they're lucky, winning that rarest of gifts - a second chance.

Author Biography

Bay Area native Elizabeth Stix writes and edits in Northern California. Her stories have appeared in McSweeney's, Tin House, Boulevard, The Los Angeles Times Sunday magazine, and elsewhere. Her work has been performed live at Selected Shorts in New York and the New Short Fiction Series in LA, and her story " Alice" was optioned by Sneaky Little Sister Films. In the early 2000s, she founded the vanguard lit zine The Big Ugly Review. Her stories have won the Bay Guardian Fiction Prize and the Katherine Manoogian Scholarship Prize, and have been finalists or semi-finalists for the Disquiet Prize,