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Allen Barnett saw this collection of short stories published in 1991, the same year as his death due to AIDS-related illness at the age of 36. The Body and Its Dangers and Other Stories won a Ferro-Grumley Award and a Lambda-Literary Award and is widely regarded as a classic of American literature.
Author: Allen Barnett
Paperback Published 1 December 2023 246 pages
"Allen Barnett knew how to plait the somber and the sardonic. His work is as light as it is dark, as funny as it is heart-breaking. I met him only once at a gay literary conference in San Francisco and, with that instant mixture of sincerity and intimacy for which we Americans are famous, he said to me, "I wish I didn't have to die so young. There's still so much I want to write." Every page is as fresh and immediate as the day he wrote it; we can only prize the masterful stories in this collection and regret there aren't many others." Edmund White, A Boys Own Story and Genet: A Biography
"Allen Barnett's fiction is true. That is, even when the writing is elegant it is also incisive, heated and revelatory. Each phrase, whether describing alienation or loss, desire or that which is unknowable, lands with a trembling resonance; a graceful touch which can never be forgotten. I'm grateful that his 'fully human' stories have lived to amaze a new generation." Jewelle Gomez, The Gilda Stories