Rikki Ducornet

reading from her new novel

Brightfellow

published by Coffee House Press

A feral boy comes of age on a campus decadent with starched sheets, sweating cocktails, and homemade jams. Stub is the cause of that missing sweater, the pie that disappeared off the cooling rack. Then Stub meets Billy, who takes him in, and Asthma, who enchants him, and all is found, then lost. A fragrant, voluptuous novel of imposture, misplaced affection, and emotional deformity.

An artist and writer, Rikki Ducornet has illustrated books by Robert Coover, Jorge Luis Borges, Forrest Gander, and Joanna Howard. Her paintings have been exhibited widely, including, most recently, at the Pierre Menard Gallery in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and the Salvador Allende Museum in Santiago, Chile.

Critical Praise for the work of Rikki Ducornet:

“Linguistically explosive . . . one of the most interesting American writers around.”—The Nation

“Rikki Ducornet, in the effervescent and airy Brightfellow, deftly executes a hefty lightness, the lightest of a bright, light touch that delights and spontaneously combusts right before our eyes. Like an unbounded baron in the trees, like a goat boy on the loose in the groves of academe, this book inscribes a lofty scaffolding of amazing mazes, canopies of wonder. Ignited luminescence, irresistible levitation, iridescent images—the words skip like philosophic stones through a saturated and shimmering exhalation.” —Michael Martone, author of Michael Martone and Winesburg, Indiana

“Ducornet—surrealist, absurdist, pure anarchist at times—is one of our most accomplished writers, adept at seizing on the perfect details and writing with emotion and cool detachment simultaneously. I love her style because it is penetrating and precise but also sensual without being overwrought. You experience a Ducornet novel with all of your senses.”—Jeff VanderMeer