A Thing Is Only Known When It Is Gone

"Backlit by the strange and surreal-hearts leaping into birdcages, whirlpools transporting swimmers across the globe, arms disappearing off of bodies in Florida-the twenty stories in A Thing Is Only Known Until It Is Gone lay bare the complexities and challenges of queer modern living. Characters in these stories face grief, disruption, and other losses-both literal and metaphorical-and navigate worlds that tilt away from ours but constantly feel achingly familiar. Written in the vein of modern surrealists such as Aimee Bender, Ramona Ausubel, and Brian Evenson, these stories ask what it means to desire, to search, and what happens when we do and do not find"--