Lauren Groff

Lauren Groff is the New York Times bestselling author of three novels, The Monsters of Templeton, Arcadia, and Fates and Furies, and the short story collection Delicate Edible Birds. Her work has been featured in The New Yorker, along with five Best American Short Stories anthologies. In Florida (Riverhead Books), a collection of short stories, Groff brings the reader into a place where the hazards of the natural world lie waiting to pounce — yet the greatest threats and mysteries are still emotional and psychological. The stories span characters, towns, decades, even centuries, but Florida—its landscape, climate, history, and state of mind —is their gravitational center. A family retreat can be derailed by a prowling panther, or by a sexual secret. We meet a resourceful pair of abandoned sisters; a lonely boy, grown up; a restless, childless couple, a searching, homeless woman; and a recurring character—a steely and conflicted wife and mother. Groff writes about loneliness, rage, family, the passage of time and the moments of pleasure and pain, hope and despair, love and fury, that make us alive. The New Yorker called it “Gorgeously weird and limber.”