Women I Know

(Paperback)

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Shortlisted for the NSW PremiersLiterary Award, Christina Stead Prize for Fiction

Shortlisted for the NSW PremiersLiterary Award, UTS Glenda Adams Award for New Writing

Unpicking the stitches of gender and genre, the stories in this searing, funny, haunting debut explore how our ideas of womanhood shape us, and what they cost us.

My God darlingthe women I know.

A young woman tries to cheat her algorithm, creating a wholesome online persona while her real life dissipates. A grandmother speaks to her granddaughter through the fog of generations. Two lovers divide over alternative meat options. A factory worker fits eyes in companion dolls until she is called on to install her own.

The women I know are sharp, absurd, sly, wrong, wry, repressed, hungry, horny, bold, envious, dominating, uncertain, overdetermined, underpaid, bored, smart, crystalizing, themselves.

A burning talent with growing international recognition, Katerina Gibsons work has appeared in Granta, Kill Your Darlings, Overland and elsewhere. She is the Pacific regional winner of the 2021 Commonwealth Short Story Prize and recipient of the Felix Meyer Scholarship.

Smart, gleeful, savage, funny and genuinely brilliant. I kept wanting to cry out with joy! Katerina Gibson is a superstar.Miles Allinson, author of In Moonland and Fever of Animals

[These stories] demonstrate an intellectual and imaginative power in their fearless probing into corners of the human world we didnt even think existed until now. ... an author prepared to question and disrupt everything. This is an assured collection, audacious, dark, comic, and full of surprises it demands to be reread, several times. Debra Adelaide, ABR

'Women I Know is a rich, contemporary blend of inventive and entertaining writing. Dark and funny, Katerina Gibsons stories are sparkling with ideas its thrilling that the future of Australian fiction is held in such talented hands.'Ben Walter, author of What Fear Was

'Come for the bold conceits, stay for the savage disaffection. These mind-bending stories startle, surprise, beguile and devastate. Gibsons talent, in striking out from the shores of realism, is to bring us closer to the truths of contemporary life.'Jo Lennan, author of In the Time of Foxes

[T]he pieces in Gibsons fiction debut create an elegant and subtle whole, with delicate prose that moves the reader as expertly as it disturbs them. Georgia Brough, Books+Publishing

Katerina Gibson is a serious writer whose talent is going to envelop the whole world--you heard it here first. Reading this book made me genuinely excited and genuinely appalled by the depth of Gibson's promise.'Ellena Savage, author of Blueberries

Reviews

'The world doesn't need more of anything much but it does need more aberrant story collections about deranged women. Women I Know is that; it's spiky and sexy, a bit evil, and tender-wet on its underside. Katerina Gibson is a serious writer whose talent is going to envelop the whole world you heard it here first. Reading this book made me genuinely excited and genuinely appalled by the depth of Gibson's promise.' -- Ellena Savage, author of Blueberries
[These stories] demonstrate an intellectual and imaginative power in their fearless probing into corners of the human world we didnt even think existed until now. an author prepared to question and disrupt everything. This is an assured collection, audacious, dark, comic, and full of surprises it demands to be reread, several times. -- Debra Adelaide * ABR *
Smart, gleeful, savage, funny and genuinely brilliant. I kept wanting to cry out with joy! Katerina Gibson is a superstar. -- Miles Allison, author of In Moonland and Fever of Animals
'Women I Know is a rich, contemporary blend of inventive and entertaining writing. Dark and funny, Katerina Gibsons stories are sparkling with ideas its thrilling that the future of Australian fiction is held in such talented hands.'
-- Ben Walter, author of What Fear Was
'Come for the bold conceits, stay for the savage disaffection. These mind-bending stories startle, surprise, beguile and devastate. Gibsons talent, in striking out from the shores of realism, is to bring us closer to the truths of contemporary life.' -- Jo Lennan, author of In the Time of Foxes
'In Women I Know Gibson expertly blends genre-bending plots with complex undercurrents of feeling and reflection ... Indeed, the thread that connects the protagonists of these vastly different stories is the lived experiences shared by all women, complicated and disturbing as they often are. Read together, the pieces in Gibson's fiction debut create an elegant and subtle whole, with delicate prose that moves the reader as expertly as it disturbs them.' * Books+Publishing *
'The world doesn't need more of anything much but it does need more aberrant story collections about deranged women. Women I Know is that; it's spiky and sexy, a bit evil, and tender-wet on its underside. Katerina Gibson is a serious writer whose talent is going to envelop the whole world--you heard it here first. Reading this book made me genuinely excited and genuinely appalled by the depth of Gibson's promise.' -- Ellena Savage, author of Blueberries

Author Bio

Katerina Gibson was born in 1994. She is a writer and a bookseller living in Naarm. Her stories have appeared in Granta,Overland, The Lifted Brow, Island Online, Going Down Swinging, the Meanjin blog and the Kill Your Darlings 2020 New Australian Fiction anthology. Most recently, her short story Fertile Soil was the Pacific regional winner of the 2021 Commonwealth Short Story Prize. Katerina is a 2021 Felix Meyer Scholar.