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Jane Ciabattari
Jane Ciabattari is the author of the short-story collections Stealing The Fire and California Tales. Her reviews, interviews, and cultural reporting have appeared in The New York Times Book Review, The Daily Beast, the Paris Review, the Boston Globe, The Guardian, Bookforum, Chicago Tribune, Los Angeles Times, Washington Post, and BBC.com among others. She is a current vice president/online and former president of the National Book Critics Circle.
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Young Liliane reads Bonjour Tristesse with her father in Italy, Peyton Place with her mother in Maine — and author Lily Tuck builds the disparate pieces of her life into a compelling portrait.
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Samantha Shannon's richly detailed follow-up to The Bone Season picks up with clairvoyant heroine Paige on the run after leading a revolt against the alien oppressors of her far-future England.
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Author Hortense Calisher once called the short story "an apocalypse in a teacup." Critic Jane Ciabattari presents her favorite mini-apocalypses of 2012, from veteran authors like Sherman Alexie to newcomer Claire Vaye Watkins, who combines a unique voice and a shadowed family history in her debut collection.