Described by the Atlantic as 'one of America's living masters of the short story', Stuart Dybek has been accoladed on all fronts, receiving fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Guggenheim Foundation, and the MacArthur Foundation, a PEN/Malamud Prize, a Lannan Award, a Whiting Writers Award, and four O. Henry Prizes. His fiction, poetry, and nonfiction have appeared widely in journals such as Harper's, Poetry, Tin House, the Atlantic, and the New Yorker.
One of the most soulful writers in America, and a national treasure -- George Saunders A poet of the short story, Stuart Dybek is a strange and exceptional talent... Impressive. -- Phil Baker * Sunday Times * [Dybek's stories] are strikingly with-it, distinctly 21st century in their shape and method... Dybek has also always stirred understated, powerfully realized and ravishingly beautiful images almost casually into his work. -- Kate Clanchy * Guardian * [The Start of Something is] worth leaping on. -- Hephzibah Anderson * Observer * A great deal of the art of the short story is to do with exits and entrances... [Dybek] has a knack for getting both things right... Dybek is - and this he certainly has in common with Ishiguro - a writer doing completely his own thing. -- Sam Leith * Financial Times *