Greetings!

I’m happy to announce that my new story collection, Dinner With Osama, which won the Richard Sullivan Prize, is in your local bookstore. For a preview, take a look at the Kirkus review below.

There are two satirical stories featuring Bush and Osama; a surreal, dreamy fantasy piece; a hilarious story about women’s bellies, several mother/daughter stories, and meta-fictional tales in which my voice as the author mediates the story’s action. The settings range from Whole Foods in Boulder, Colorado which becomes the site of the Rocky Mountain’s first suicide bombing—to southern Sudan, where, through the lens of an unusual and amazing love affair between two U.N. aid workers, Dinka and Nuer negotiate the charnel house of Sudan’s genocidal war.

I hope, given the wide range of issues the book addresses, that you’ll see it as a great selection for your book group. If your group is in the Denver/Boulder area, contact me, and I’ll be happy to visit your group.

Warmly,

Krysl is funny, fierce, and feminist in the best possible way, and a technician of variety and resourcefulness.
I read her short stories with considerable pleasure, surprise, and admiration.

                     —John Updike

A strong story collection from  Krysl (How To Accommodate Men, 1998) showcasing a feminist, leftist, postmodernist, funny voice.

Colorado’s own Sheila, in the title story, is PC in extremis, besotted by a Boulder where you “can order arias sung for the spleen tailored to your personal astro printout and, if the acupuncturist recommends it, get a liver massage.” Her sister’s son is killed in the Towers, she’s grieving, but also scheming for nothing less than world peace. Her plan: to seduce Osama bin Laden with a meal of “Alaskan Salmon a la Tetsuya marinated in fresh basil, coriander, thyme, and grape seed oil.”  Sure enough the Evildoer, complete with dialysis machine and Koranic quotes, arrives at her place for din-din. And even while he blusters—“I’m Islam’s version of The Rock”—so smitten is he with the eats and the chef that he actually contemplates a talk with George W. Bush. If Bush will meet his requests, including backing out of Saudi Arabia, bin Laden will “call off jihad and send our women to college.” Krysl has a thing for Boulder, even more so, a life with allusions to the paintings of Mary Cassatt, and “Cherry Garcia, Pistachio Cream” is a beauteously real portrayal of mother/daughter bonding. The more political Krysl gets, the bleaker the results—think William Burroughs without the Misogyny. Her piece “Welcome to the Torture Center, Love,” concerning a night journey through the inferno that is war-torn Sudan, is a dazzler.
A compassionate and incendiary work.

                     —Kirkus Reviews