The Story I Tell Myself About Myself
Winner of the 2017 Sonder Press Chapbook competition
Now available from Sonder Press
Barnes & Noble, IndieBound, Amazon
"The fifteen stories in Layden’s new collection—a follow-up to her powerhouse debut novel, Trip Through Your Wires—explore loss, loneliness, and life. The stories run the gamut from magical realism to realism that’s magical, each with Layden’s sharp wit, insightfully drawn characters, and unflinching prose."
- James Figy for Split Lip Magazine
"Sarah Layden’s flash fiction collection, The Story I Tell Myself About Myself, evokes ghosts of Sherwood Anderson’s well-known 'grotesques' in Winesburg, Ohio. Layden’s characters, too, are flawed and broken, grappling with isolation and desperation, attempting to endure their pain. And like Anderson’s, Layden’s characters are deeply worth the time and effort to understand them."
-Dheepa R. Maturi for PANK Magazine
"The Story I Tell Myself about Myself by Sarah Layden is a wonderful assemblage of pure storytelling genius. These fifteen stories are by turns heart-wrenching, funny, and deliciously surprising. Layden is a deft, intelligent writer at the height of her powers. Read this book, then seek out everything else she has written."
-Kathy Fish, author of Wild Life
"The Story I Tell Myself About Myself gives you no choice but this: stay. Stay with these characters and listen to what they have to tell you."
-Frannie McMillan for SmokeLong Quarterly
"This style/approach reminds me of one of my favorite authors, Aimee Bender, how she just throws her wildly creative and wonderful concepts out in the first sentence, then goes from there—I’ve tried to copy that for the last twenty years or so, to varying degrees of success. Layden is way better at it than me. That’s why I like this book so much, I think, because it reminds me of what I love about writing, what has always inspired me, what inspires me today."
-Michael Czyzniejewski, Story366
"To believe Layden tapped into a magic is to discredit the hard work she committed to crafting these stories, some dating back a decade. Still, each page crackles with energy you’d expect radiating from a wand, not from short prose."
-Joshua P. Flynn for NUVO
"Slippery, secretive, and sensual, Layden's short fiction is simply magical."
- Dan Grossman & Laura McPhee for NUVO
"Sarah Layden's excellent new chapbook is sleet and ice cracking. It's ducks, boots, candles, and comets. It's phone calls and packages; ham salad and ovulation. It's so many things all pulled together with the strong, confident pen of Sarah Layden. These stories dwell in leaving and loss, displacement and memory. Layden lets the world in, breathes the world out. Join her."
- Sherrie Flick, author of Thank Your Lucky Stars
"Loss and disappointment permeate Layden's stories, often fantastical allegories...we feel it, too, in the straight-shooting family narratives...Either way, the dead-on characterization grounds the reader...There is something familiar in Layden's stories, and it stings."
- Thea Swanson, author of MARS and The Curious Solitude of Anise
Trip Through Your Wires
A novel available from Engine Books, Powell's, Indie Bound, and more. Find it on Goodreads and Amazon.
The Chicago Tribune recommends Trip Through Your Wires.
"Traumatized by her experience in Mexico, Carey Halpern is trying to snap out of her Prufrock-like trance. She's smart and she's funny. Now, if she can just solve her boyfriend's murder. Sarah Layden is in complete control of time, language, and narrative in this beautiful story that has everything to do with how we live with our pasts."
-Margaret McMullan, author of Sources of Light
"Trip Through Your Wires is compulsively readable." -Porter Shreve, author of The End of the Book
"In this haunting first novel, Sarah Layden constructs a machine of longing, capturing the minute maze of memory. Trip Through Your Wires is a patient, powerful, and profound emotional unraveling."
-Michael Martone, author of Four for a Quarter
“Trip Through Your Wires is a welcome antidote to despair. Sarah Layden is the real thing.”
-Kyle Minor, author of Praying Drunk
"Layden intricately traces the maze of human memory, full of twists and dead ends. She shows how the past controls us, even when it’s misremembered or misinterpreted."
-James Figy, PANK Magazine
"Sarah Layden's debut novel Trip Through Your Wires is a powerful and haunting examination of memory and loss."
-David Gutowski, Largehearted Boy
AVAILABLE NOW! Trip Through Your Wires in audiobook.
Read by the author. From Amazon, Audible.com, Audiobooks.com, iTunes, Overdrive, Hoopla, & more.
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