Company by Shannon Sanders

A richly detailed, brilliantly woven debut collection about the lives and
lore of one Black family
Shannon Sanders's sparkling debut brings us into the company of the Collins
family and their acquaintances as they meet, bicker, compete, celebrate,
worry, keep and reveal secrets, build lives and careers, and endure. Moving
from Atlantic City to New York to DC, from the 1960s to the 2000s, from law
students to drag performers to violinists to matriarchs, Company tells a
multifaceted, multigenerational saga in thirteen stories.
Each piece in Company includes a moment when a guest arrives at
someone's home. In The Good, Good Men," two brothers reunite to oust a
"deadbeat" boyfriend from their mother's house. In "The Everest Society," the
brothers' sister anxiously prepares for a home visit from a social worker before
adopting a child. In "Birds of Paradise," their aunt, newly promoted to
university provost, navigates a minefield of microaggressions at her own
welcome party. And in the haunting title story, the provost's sister finds her
solitary life disrupted when her late sister's daughter comes calling.
These are stories about intimacy, societal and familial obligations, and the
ways inheritances shape our fates. Buoyant, somber, sharp, and affectionate,
this collection announces a remarkable new voice in fiction.

Shannon Sanders lives and works near Washington, DC. Her fiction has
appeared in One Story, Electric Literature, Joyland, TriQuarterly, and
elsewhere, and was a 2020 winner of the PEN/Robert J. Dau Short Story
Prize for Emerging Writers.

Graywolf Press
On Sale: Oct 3/23
6 x 9 • 208 pages
9781644452516 • $36.00 • CL - With dust jacket
Fiction / Literary