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BookRiot readers like The Wilds! “44 of Your Favorite Short Story Collections” lists some of my favorite collections, including  The Bloody Chamber by Angela Carter, Can’t and Won’t: Stories by Lydia Davis, The Complete Stories by Franz Kafka, Drinking Coffee Elsewhere by Z.Z. Packer, Get In Trouble by Kelly Link, The Girl in the Flammable Skirt by Aimee Bender, How to Breathe Under Water by Julie Orringer, North American Lake Monsters by Nathan Ballingrud, The Shell Collector by Anthony Doerr, St. Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves by Karen Russell, Tenth of December by George Saunders, The Thing Around Your Neck by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, and Windeye by Brian Evenson.

In this “Research Notes” piece for Necessary Fiction, I not only explain how I faked knowledge of brain enhancement technologies, taxidermy, and hog hunting, but I threw in a slick product placement for Feral Fire™ Sow in Heat Spray, which contains “all the power of a Sow in Heat [in a] handy spray bottle.” To learn more about “this potent sow urine, [which ] has all the magic it takes to put that Trophy Boar in the hot seat,” click here!

I’m headed to Nashville this weekend for the ginormous Southern Festival of Books. In their handy guide to the fest, Nashville Scene says “The New and Improved Romie Futch . . . looses a Foucault-damaged South Carolina taxidermist onto a futuristic hellscape ravaged by genetically modified ‘Hogzillas.'” My panel’s at noon on Sunday, October 11.

“Bookshots: Pumping new life into the corpse of the book review.” Keith Rawson does just that in his LitReactor review of The New and Improved Romie Futch.

“The New and Improved Romie Futch is a wildly inventive first novel which not only contains some of the most genuinely funny scenes I’ve read in recent memory, but also contains some truly evocative, poetic prose that will make word nerds swoon when they read it. Simply put, The New and Improved Romie Futch easily ranks as one of my favorite reads of 2015, and I guarantee you’ll read this exceptional debut novel in one sitting.”

The wonderful Bustle included The New and Improved Romie Futch in “13 of October 2015’s Best Books to Read in the Crisp Air.”

“Julia Elliott may be a wizard,” writes Meredith Turits, “and I don’t throw that term around with abandon. She proved to us with her short story collection, The Wilds, that her prose is like nothing you’ve ever read: sharp, hilarious, dark, and, expansive all at once. With Romie Futch, a book about a divorced South Carolina taxidermist who is haunted by his ex-wife, and arguably isn’t taking the best steps to get his life back on track, Elliott has gone above and beyond with an eye-opening gothic satire that pushes the boundaries of dystopia.”

Vol.1 Brooklyn has a great October books preview up today (and, yes, they kindly included The New and Improved Romie Futch).

My debut novel, The New and Improved Romie Futch, drops tomorrow. Here’s a great preview from J.W. Bonner of Kirkus Reviews. If you click on this link, you’ll see the most exploited chicken in South Carolina.

I refused to believe that T.C. Boyle had selected my story “Bride” for Best American Short Stories 2015 until I saw it in print (I still can’t trust my eyes). Thanks, Conjunctions, for publishing this story last fall.

“Summer beach reads now dispensed with, all evidence of sand and flip-flop summarily destroyed, it is soon time to return to real life (the lateness of Labor Day notwithstanding)—this means reading even more books. With this daunting task in mind we asked our bookseller partners across the country to weigh in about the forthcoming titles they are most excited about this fall: from tiny press to giant publishing house, they’ve come up with a list of 75 books, from YA to experimental, history to thriller. Because booksellers will never lie about the books they love.”

Two great takes on The New and Improved Romie Futch in this list!

I’m stoked that Keith Rawson included The Wilds in this LitReactor list (among some of my favorite writers).