RUNNER UP FOR THE ACACIA FICTION PRIZE

In this absurd and wildly inventive debut collection, Emily Greenberg imagines the inner lives of the politicians, celebrities, artists, and entertainers who have ushered in our post-truth era. 

With equal parts compassion and incisiveness, Greenberg vividly renders the porous boundaries between fact and fiction, public and private, reality and simulation. George W. Bush almost tells Jay Leno the truth about his paintings. Kellyanne Conway lands a punch. Hawaii’s governor enjoys a transcendent experience with a sentient Twitter bird amid a disastrous false missile alert. And in the final story, Paris Hilton falls from a helicopter onto Thomas Pynchon’s fire escape, leading to a surreal adventure full of magical dentists, talking dogs, and unexpected friendships. 

Satirical and deadly serious, clever and tender, Alternative Facts forges new spaces for meaning and connection across our fractured realities.

Emily Greenberg’s writing has appeared in the Iowa Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, Witness, Big Fiction, Santa Monica Review, Chicago Quarterly Review, New Stories from the Midwest, and elsewhere.

Cover design by Raúl Lázaro

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