Near Flesh: Stories

**“Dunn’s pieces have an almost irrepressible kinetic energy.”** **—Alexandra Kleeman, *The New York Times***
**A previously unpublished collection of stories about motherhood, violence, and desire, from the cult icon Katherine Dunn, the author of *Geek Love*.**
A woman invests in a series of sex robots to get her off and comes to terms with the limitations—and real threat—of automated companionship. A knowing young student pursues an affair with an older man, the poet in residence at the university where she studies writing, and weighs the benefits and costs of their arrangement. A mother moves to a farm with her family and must come to terms with the violence simmering beneath her skin.
*Near Flesh* is the first and only collection of short fiction by Katherine Dunn, the author of the bestselling novel *Geek Love*. These nineteen stories are, like Dunn’s entire body of work, attuned to the spit and grit of tough living. They pulse with yearning for a more prosperous life, for sexual satisfaction, to escape abusive husbands and the disappointments of convention. A better life, for these mostly female protagonists, seems always just out of reach. In *Near Flesh* , Dunn explores the struggle of women to live on their own terms, and the desire to relish—rather than squash—what distinguishes a person.