Large Animals

"...joins in with the classics of loaded, outlaw literature... this is an electric debut." Maggie Nelson; "Everything in Jess Arndt's Large Animals veers towards the supernatural. Everything is strangely bodily and shape-shifting. Hugely original, this debut is wild." - Isabel Waidner; "Jess Arndt has crafted a queer uncanny, an eerily recognizable landscape of dark magic and darker humor where the instability of bodies, desire, relationships, and the self take on a supernatural dimension. A tremendously exciting collection." - Michelle Tea; "Jess Arndt is like a queer Kafka''- Ingrid Contreras, New York Times editor's choice author of Fruit of the Drunken Tree. “Each time I pick up a book, this is the voice I’m hoping to hear. Honest, agitating, queer, visionary. Arndt refuses binaries, haunting the space between. The pleasure of Large Animals is in the bite.” - Justin Torres, author of We the Animals "Strange, smart, and probing... an important voice on timely questions of the body politic." - Elle “Arndt’s vivid, rollicking stories represent a new kind of American outlaw literature, of transgression and nonconformity and queerness and heart, all told in a propulsive, original voice.” - Literary Hub “Metamorphosis―of time, of space, of character―is exposed in every playful sentence of Large Animals. Language will not be kept in its form. Life, poetry, gender are always in the process of transformation, and this fundamental condition is at the heart of Jess Arndt’s stories. Large Animals is a strange and beautiful must-read.” - Dorthe Nors, author of Karate Chop and So Much for That Winter "Jess Arndt’s writing is so strange and imaginative that it provides release from the real world." - The Cut "Arndt tells stories that resemble handfuls of ribbons―vibrant, overlapping, tangled, seemingly more middles than beginnings and endings. . . . Arndt’s keen, wild stories are truly original, and readers will hope for more." - Booklist "Arndt’s short stories are delicious flights of fancy, or obsession, or fertile curiosity―or, more accurately, some beguiling combination of all three...This is a playful and provocative collection, full of sly, deft turns of phrase and striking imagery." - Publishers Weekly “[A] bold new literary voice, borderless and brave.” - O, The Oprah Magazine "Reading Arndt is like walking toward a shimmering desert mirage and being met with a cloud of acid instead of an oasis of cool water… A deeply transgressive, riveting shot out of the gate. Arndt is one to watch." - Kirkus Reviews