Fat Swim

“Emma Copley Eisenberg is attuned to every beautiful, terrible human thing: desire, shame, sensation, connection. Fat Swim is a lush, radical meditation on the body’s pleasure and potential.”—Carmen Maria Machado, author of In the Dream House

“Eisenberg packs her stories with eating, drinking, sweating, performing, and hooking up. Each of her characters, no matter how alienated or hedonistic, is made to reconsider the ways their body touches the outside world—and they learn to focus less on how that looks and more on how it feels.”—The Atlantic

“These are some of the best short stories I’ve read in a long time—vivid, surprising, and pin-sharp. Emma Copley Eisenberg is a phenomenal talent. Buy this collection and thank me later.”—Kelly Link, author of The Book of Love

“Absolutely everything I ever imagined for the future of American fiction.”—Kiese Laymon, author of Long Division

“Spiky, acerbic, and utterly addictive.”—Playboy

“Emma Copley Eisenberg brings a fierce and funny voice to her stories, laying bare the complications of loving oneself in a hyper-judgmental society.”—Chicago Review of Books

“There is pain in all of these stories, many of them tales of queer love and a quest to be seen and understood. But there is also glee, a sense of liberation that in the end, is infectious.”—The Boston Globe

“Emma is one of the foremost thinkers about fatphobia in literature but also in American culture more broadly.”—Jennifer Wilson, The New Yorker Radio Hour

“Conjuring the sweaty gleam of summer, the friction and curative powers of the beach, and the discomfort and disappointments of a body that doesn’t always feel right, Fat Swim is a deeply human look at how our bodies impact who we are and how we navigate the world.”—C-Ville Weekly

“What is celebration if not looking closely, observing, lifting up? It is why I can recommend this book widely and without prejudice, for who, among us all, does not have this thing we call a body?”—Autostraddle

“Eisenberg’s work espouses body neutrality: the simple tenet that everyone just, you know, has a body.”—Dazed

“Funny and moving, often at the same time, the stories mash together serious issues with pure comedy.”—The Orange County Register

“The collection resists the erasure of fat bodies in American letters, mostly by giving us all too rare portraits of pleasure and desire.”—Electric Literature

“I can’t stop thinking about these stories. Emma Copley Eisenberg is one of the most interesting and observant young fiction writers on the scene.”—Andrea Lawlor, author of Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl

“Eisenberg has a spooky talent for inhabiting the minds of completely disparate people. All the narrators are funny, wise, and heartbreaking, and know how to tell a quick, gripping story.”—Torrey Peters, author of Stag Dance

“Funny, mordant, and tender all at once—this is the rare book that exuberantly inhabits the human body, in all its grossness and glory.”—Rachel Khong, author of My Dear You

“I loved these stories—funny and sad and deeply resonant.”—Marcy Dermansky, author of Hot Air

“A quietly radical collection.”—The Brooklyn Rail

“Glittering.”—Publishers Weekly

“Dynamic.”—Booklist