Before You Suffocate Your Own Fool Self

Before You Suffocate Your Own Fool Self, published in 2010 by Riverhead Books,  is a collection of eight short stories, some of which have appeared in magazines and anthologies including The Paris Review, A Public Space, Best American Short Stories, and New Stories From the South.  It is a co-winner of the 2011 PEN American Robert W. Bingham Prize for a first book, a National Book Foundation 5 under 35 selection for 2011, the winner of the 2011 Paterson Prize for Fiction and the 2011 Hurston-Wright award for fiction, and an honorable mention for the 2011  PEN/Hemingway award.You can order the collection here, here,  here, or here, or read reviews here.

Advanced Praise for Before You Suffocate Your Own Fool Self:

“Danielle Evans is funny as hell. Which only makes all the heartbreak in these stories more surprising and satisfying. The young women in this collection are always on the edge of real trouble but don’t be fooled, they’re the dangerous ones. Written with wonderful clarity and a novelist’s sense of scope, Before You Suffocate Your Own Fool Self is a fabulous literary debut.”
  – Victor La Valle, author of Big Machine

“Danielle Evans’s considerable talents are in evidence on every page of this impressive debut. She finds her often surprising dramatic
material in the unexpected asides of modern life, with results that are intense, intelligent, humane, and funny. I look forward to reading
more.”

- Daniel Alarcón, author of Lost City Radio

“Danielle Evans’s stories are fresh, arresting, real. The young women and men in them could be sitting across from you on the subway or strolling past  you on a college campus. And the young woman who brings them to us is a writer to watch.”

 - Martha Southgate, author of The Fall of Rome

“Danielle Evans makes you laugh with recognition while showing you the consequences of human nature. Her knife-sharp wit and tender but unflinching eye create a range of characters who are entirely sympathetic, even as they tumble headlong into their own mistakes.”
    – V.V. Ganeshananthan, author of Love Marriage

“Quietly magnetic, Evans’s voice draws us into richly-charged worlds where innocence isn’t lost but escaped, and where pieces of the past reassemble in the present with the inevitable geometry of kaleidoscope glass. Delivered with a light touch that belies their maturity, these morally complex stories mark the arrival of a gifted new author.”

– Sana Krasikov, author of One More Year

“Wise, funny, startling stories.  Full of hard truths about sex and race in America, and what it’s like to grow up fast in a slow-changing country, this brave collection will make you laugh and clutch your heart at the same time.”

—Eric Puchner, author of Music Through the Floor