Winner of the Katherine Anne Porter Prize in Short Fiction

The stories in What Did You Do Today? explore the ordinary and the offbeat as if they were one and the same, asking what it’s like to be alive and what makes us human. With warmth, humor, and wonder, these stories suggest that the past is always alive in the present and that even the most fleeting relationships have the power to change us forever. In these short narratives, nothing is negligible, and all experience is transformative.

“The stories in this book are like hard little perfect gems. Except when they’re like nice firm chewy gummy candies with something extra inside. Or maybe like zingy, spritzery shots of something to drink. Or brain zaps. Or like when your doctor taps your knee just right and you don’t know how they did it. Which I guess means just that this excitingly original work rewards a reader intellectually and emotionally and stylistically, and with humor and pity and sadness all at once. It’s a book I will recommend to my smart reader friends.”—Rebecca Brown, judge and author of The Gifts of the Body and You Tell the Stories You Need to Believe