Sayrafiezadeh, Saïd

Saïd Sayrafiezadeh was born in Brooklyn, New York, and raised in Pittsburgh. He is the author of a memoir, When Skateboards Will Be Free, and a story collection, Brief Encounters with the Enemy. His writing has appeared in The New Yorker, The Paris Review, Granta, The New York Times Magazine, and McSweeney’s. American Estrangement: Stories (W. W. Norton & Company), his new collection of short works, some of which have been published previously, is set in a contemporary America full of emotionally bruised characters. These are people contending with internal struggles – a son’s fractured relationship with his father, the death of a mother, the loss of a job, drug addiction – even as they deal with the larger, often invisible, economic, political, and racial forces of American society. Kirkus called it “lyrical, funny, smart, and heartbreaking.”