Big Bad
2021
First Published
4.24
Average Rating
177
Number of Pages
Within the thirteen stories of Whitney Collins’s Big Bad dwells a hunger that’s dark, deep, and hilarious. Part domestic horror, part flyover gothic, Big Bad serves up real-world predicaments in unremarkable places (motels, dormitories, tiki bars), all with Collins’s heart-wrenching flavor of magical realism. A young woman must give birth to future iterations of herself; a widower kills a horse en route to his grandson’s circumcision; a conflicted summer camper is haunted by a glass eye and motorcycle crash. Collins’s cast of characters must repeatedly choose to fight or flee the “big bad” that dwells within us all. Winner of the Mary McCarthy Prize in Short Fiction, and boasting a 2020 Pushcart-winning story, Big Bad simultaneously entertains and disconcerts.
Avg Rating
4.24
Number of Ratings
88
5 STARS
48%
4 STARS
33%
3 STARS
15%
2 STARS
5%
1 STARS
0%
goodreads
Author
Whitney Collins
Author · 3 books
Whitney is the author of BIG BAD, winner of the 2019 Mary McCarthy Prize, a 2022 IPPY Gold Medal, and a 2021 INDIES Bronze. Her second book, RICKY & OTHER LOVE STORIES, is forthcoming January 2024. In 2022, she earned a Distinguished Story nod from Best American Short Stories. In addition, she won the 2021 ProForma Contest, a 2020 Pushcart Prize, a 2020 Pushcart Prize Special Mention, and the 2020 American Short(er) Fiction Prize. Her stories have appeared/are forthcoming in American Short Fiction, AGNI, The Idaho Review, The Best Small Fictions 2022, Gulf Coast, and the Catapult anthology TINY NIGHTMARES, among others.
