Monstress

"The debut of an electric literary talent. Brilliantly quirky, often moving, always gorgeously told....Bravo for this fabulous American fiction "
--Chang-Rae Lee, New York Times bestselling author of Native Speaker

"A wonderful story collection that's as wide and rich and complex as the geography it spans."
-- Ben Fountain, PEN/Hemingway award-winning author of Brief Encounters with Che Guevera

"Tenorio is a deep and original writer, and Monstress is simply a beautiful book."
--Jessica Hagedorn, author of Dogeaters

A luminous collection of heartbreaking, vivid, startling, and gloriously unique stories set amongst the Filipino-American communities of California and the Philippines, Monstress heralds the arrival of a breathtaking new talent on the literary scene: Lysley Tenorio. Already the worthy recipient of a Pushcart Prize, a Whiting Writer's Award, and a Stegner Fellowship, Tenorio brilliantly explores the need to find connections, the melancholy of isolation, and the sometimes suffocating ties of family in tales that range from a California army base to a steamy moviehouse in Manilla, to the dangerous false glitter of Hollywood.

Lysley Tenorio is the author of the novel The Son of Good Fortune and the story collection Monstress, named a book of the year by the San Francisco Chronicle. He is the recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship, a Whiting Award, a Stegner fellowship, and the Rome Prize from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, as well as residencies from the MacDowell Colony, Yaddo, and the Bogliasco Foundation. His stories have appeared in the Atlantic, Zoetrope: All-Story, and Ploughshares, and have been adapted for the stage by The American Conservatory Theater in San Francisco and the Ma-Yi Theater in New York City. He is a professor at Saint Mary's College of California.