Rise, L. Annette Binder
Winner of the 2011 Mary McCarthy Prize in Short Fiction, selected by Laura Kasischke.
The stories in Rise are fairy tales, except that the witch, lucky Hans, and the frog prince are all characters at the fringes of everyday life. There are rockets, swells of starlings, and children who disappear into thin air. In "Nephilim" angels mate with mortal women and birth giants; Freda is more than 50 and still listening to the creak of her bones growing. In "Halo" a nimbus appears above the heads of those with only a short time to live. The hospital, of course, is full of them, but so is the mall. These are stories where a man can be blind and still see the stars. L. Annette Binder writes magical tales with authority and restraint, and we believe her stories, every one.
For a classroom-ready reader's guide written by the author herself, follow this link, and explore more titles with reader's guides in Sarabande in Education.
Additional Info
L. Annette Binder was born in Germany and grew up in Colorado Springs.Her fiction has recently appeared or is forthcoming inOne Story,AmericanShortFiction,The Southern Review,Third Coast, Fairy Tale Review, and others. Her story “Nephilim” will be included inThe Pushcart Prize XXXVI. She has an AB from Harvard in Classics, an MA from Berkeley, a JD from Harvard Law School, and an MFA in Fiction from the University of California, Irvine.
PRAISE FOR RISE:
“L. Annette Binder is a stunningly talented writer. Her stories are the stories of outsiders, gripping and heartfelt, heightened with hidden undertones of the surreal. It is this tension that makes the worlds she creates so vibrant, and allows her readers to see so deeply into these characters' souls. Rise is a beautiful book, and Binder’s words cut clear and straight to the bone.”
—Hannah Tinti
"Three years ago I read a story titled "Dead Languages." I came out of my chair. I've been in standing ovation position reading every subsequent story written by L. Annette Binder. They came exquisitely one by one, and now you are damn lucky to have them all in one wondrous volume: Rise.
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—Michelle Latiolais
“In one of these amazing stories a character says to her husband, ‘Why are you smiling? You’re scaring me.’ That’s how I feel about Rise. There is a yearning so deep in each story, something beautiful and urgent, that the book glows. L. Annette Binder arrives with worlds of empathy and strange surprise.”
—Ron Carlson
"L. Annette Binder has gone so deeply, and with such mystical brilliance and loyalty, into her own world that she has brought mine to me in high relief. To everything she sets her fabulist eye on, she brings this intensity. Like all of our best storytellers, she reacquaints us with our world. Borges would have recognized this genius, as would have Poe, O’Connor, and Mann. Like those writers, Binder brings word to us from beyond the quotidian of what is always there. She both casts a spell and breaks it. To experience Rise is as much to experience wonder (again, and as if for the first time) as it is to read a collection of wonderful stories."
—Laura Kasischke