A fast-moving, heartbreaking collection of short fiction from “the American writer with the funniest, wisest grasp on how we fool ourselves” (Chicago Tribune).

The word atavism, coined by a botanist and popularized by a criminologist, refers to the resurfacing of a primitive evolutionary trait or urge in a modern being. This inventive collection from Lydia Millet offers overlapping tales of urges ranging from rage to jealousy to yearning—a fluent triumph of storytelling, rich in ideas and emotions both petty and grand.

The titular atavists include an underachieving, bewildered young bartender; a middle-aged mother convinced her gentle son-in-law is fixated on geriatric porn; a bodybuilder with an incel’s fantasy life; an arrogant academic accused of plagiarism; and an empty-nester dad determined to host refugees in a tiny house in his backyard.

As they pick away at the splitting seams in American culture, Millet’s characters shimmer with the sense of powerlessness we share in an era of mass overwhelm. A beautician in a waxing salon faces a sudden resurgence of grief in the midst of a bikini Brazilian; a couple sets up a camera to find out who’s been slipping homophobic letters into their mailbox; a jilted urban planner stalks a man she met on a dating app.

In its rich warp and weft of humiliations and human error, Atavists returns to the trenchant, playful social commentary that made A Children’s Bible a runaway hit. In these stories sharp observations of middle-class mores and sanctimony give way to moments of raw exposure and longing: Atavists performs an uncanny fictional magic, full of revelation but also hilarious, unpretentious, and warm.

Lydia Millet will be joined in conversation by writer Betsy Boyd. 

About the Author: 

Lydia Millet is the author of A Children’s Bible, a finalist for the National Book Award and a New York Times Top Ten book of the Year. Her first work of short fiction, Love in Infant Monkeys, was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in 2010; her second, Fight No More (2018), won an American Academy of Arts and Sciences short fiction award. Ativists is her third work of short fiction. She lives outside Tucson, Arizona.

About the Moderator: 

Betsy Boyd is a fiction writer, journalist, and essayist. She directs the Creative Writing and Publishing Arts MFA program at the University of Baltimore and is the recipient of a Maryland State Arts Council award, an Elliot Coleman Writing Fellowship, a James A. Michener Fellowship and residencies through Fundación Valparaíso, the Alfred and Trafford Klots International Program for Artists and the Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts. Betsy’s fiction has been published in Kenyon Review, StoryQuarterly, Shenandoah, at American Short Fiction, Hunger Mountain, Eclectica, and elsewhere. Her short story “Scarecrow” received a Pushcart Prize.

About the Program: 

• To attend in person please register here.
• Doors will open to registered attendees at 6 pm. 
• A local bookseller will be on-site and have books available for purchase.
• Free parking vouchers are available to program attendees who park at the Franklin Street Garage (15 W. Franklin Street) after 4pm.  Ask Pratt event staff for your parking voucher prior to or after the program. 
• This free event will be presented in-person and virtually.