Kelly Link’s Romantic Imagination

With the release of her debut novel, , finds herself in the position was in before the release of . Link is worshiped as a short-story writer—she’s been hailed as a “” and dubbed the “”—but here she faces the challenges of matching such high praise in her first novel. Early collections like (2001) and (2005) imbued the genres of fantasy, horror, science fiction, and fairy tales with literary style at precisely the time when writers like and were first launching their now-successful campaigns to garner more respect, or at least quieter disrespect, for genre work in the literary world. Her 2015 collection, , was a finalist for the Pulitzer and was the main work cited, rewrites and riffs on fairy tales.