Deb Olin Unferth

Best Debut Short Stories 2020

The PEN America Dau Prize

The essential annual guide to the newest voices in short fiction, selected this year by Tracy O’Neill, Nafissa Thompson–Spires, and Deb Olin Unferth. 

Who are the most promising short story writers working today? Where do we look to discover the future stars of literary fiction? This book will offer a dozen compelling answers to these questions.

The stories collected here represent the most recent winners of the PEN/Robert J. Dau Short Story Prize for Emerging Writers, which recognizes twelve writers who have made outstanding debuts in literary magazines in the previous year. They are chosen by a panel of distinguished judges, themselves innovators of the short story form: Tracy O’Neill, Nafissa Thompson–Spires, and Deb Olin Unferth. Each piece comes with an introduction by its original editors, whose commentaries provide valuable insight into what magazines are looking for in their submissions, and showcase the vital work they do to nurture literature’s newest voices.

I, Parrot

A Graphic Novel

"[Unferth's] language is sly and bitterly funny, matched in mood by Haidle’s monochromatic, inkwash–style artwork, which plays up the story’s whimsy as well as its sadness." —The New York Times Book Review

Daphne is willing to risk everything to get her son back. Surreal, funny and deeply affecting, I, Parrot is the tale of mother, a son, forty–two endangered parrots, and a fierce search for redemption and a "freer world."

When Daphne loses custody of her son, she is willing to do whatever it takes to get him back—even if it means enlisting the help of the wayward love of her life, a trio of housepainters, a flock of passenger pigeons, a landlady from hell, a super–sized bag of mite–killing powder, and more parrots than she knows what to do with.

I, Parrot, by acclaimed author Deb Olin Unferth with stunning illustrations by artist Elizabeth Haidle, dips into the surreal with poignancy and humor. In this riveting, funny, and tragic graphic novel, Daphne must risk everything. Her quest is ultimately a tale about civilization’s decline, the heartbreak of extinction, and the redemption found in individual revolution.

“A lovingly crafted world of gray, at once complex and weightless.” —Roman Muradov, author of Lost and Found