Near Flesh: Stories - Hardcover

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by Katherine Dunn (Author)

"Dunn's pieces have an almost irrepressible kinetic energy." --Alexandra Kleeman, The New York Times

A previously unpublished collection of stories about motherhood, violence, and desire, from the cult icon Katherine Dunn, the author of Geek Love.

A woman invests in a series of sex robots to get her off and comes to terms with the limitations--and real threat--of automated companionship. A knowing young student pursues an affair with an older man, the poet in residence at the university where she studies writing, and weighs the benefits and costs of their arrangement. A mother moves to a farm with her family and must come to terms with the violence simmering beneath her skin.

Near Flesh is the first and only collection of short fiction by Katherine Dunn, the author of the bestselling novel Geek Love. These nineteen stories are, like Dunn's entire body of work, attuned to the spit and grit of tough living. They pulse with yearning for a more prosperous life, for sexual satisfaction, to escape abusive husbands and the disappointments of convention. A better life, for these mostly female protagonists, seems always just out of reach. In Near Flesh, Dunn explores the struggle of women to live on their own terms, and the desire to relish--rather than squash--what distinguishes a person.

Author Biography

Katherine Dunn is the author of Geek Love, which was a finalist for the National Book Award and the Bram Stoker Award. During her lifetime, she also published the novels Attic and Truck. In 2022, MCD / Farrar, Straus and Giroux published Toad, Dunn's first posthumous novel. Near Flesh, her second posthumous book, is Dunn's first and only short-story collection. Her fiction and her prolific writing on boxing appeared during her lifetime, and afterward, in The New Yorker, The Paris Review, Esquire, The New York Times Magazine, and other publications. Dunn died in 2016.

Number of Pages: 272

Dimensions: 1.1 x 8.4 x 5.4 IN

Publication Date: October 07, 2025