Join us for a conversation between Courtney Sender, author of the debut story collection, In Other Lifetimes All I’ve Lost Comes Back to Me: Stories, and Raisa Tolchinksy on Friday, March 24th at 7pm.
“A distinctive debut from a promising author.” — Kirkus Reviews
“A stunner from the very first page.” –Deesha Philyaw, author of The Secret Lives of Church Ladies, in the Millions
Populated with lovers who leave and return, with ghosts of the Holocaust and messages from the dead, Courtney Sender’s debut collection speaks in a singular new voice about the longings and loneliness of contemporary love. The world of these fourteen interlocking stories is fiercely real but suffused with magic and myth, dark wit, and distinct humor. Here, ancient loss works its way deep into the psyche of modern characters, stirring their unrelenting lust for life.
In “To Do With the Body,” the Museum of Period Clothes becomes the perfect setting for a bloody crime. In “Lilith in God’s Hands,” Adam’s first wife has an affair in the Garden of Eden. And in the title story, a woman spends her life waiting for any of the men who have left her to come back, only to find them all at her doorstep at once.
For readers of Elena Ferrante, Nicole Krauss, and Carmen Maria Machado, and for anyone who has known love and loneliness, In Other Lifetimes All I’ve Lost Comes Back to Me is a wise and sensual collection of old hauntings, new longings, and unexpected returns, with a finale that is a rousing call to the strength we each have, together or alone.
Courtney Sender’s writing has appeared in the New York Times’ Modern Love, the Atlantic, the Kenyon Review, American Short Fiction, and Tin House, among others. A MacDowell and Yaddo fellow, she holds an MFA from the Johns Hopkins Writing Seminars and an MTS from Harvard Divinity School. She currently lives in the Boston area.
Raisa Tolchinsky writes about love, grief, and the wisdom of the body. Her debut book Glass Jaw is forthcoming from Persea Books in 2024. She is a recipient of the Henfield Prize for Fiction and a 2x Pushcart Prize nominee. Raisa earned her M.F.A. in poetry from the University of Virginia and her B.A. from Bowdoin College. She has previously lived in Chicago, Italy, and New York, where she trained as an amateur boxer. Currently, Raisa is the George Bennett Writer-in-Residence at Phillips Exeter Academy in New Hampshire. She is a partner, daughter, sister, teacher, and a forever student of the vastness.