Contemporary Authors

• Of This New World ( short stories) University of Iowa Press (Iowa City, IA), 2016

• Allegra Hyde - https://www.allegrahyde.com/

  A native of New Hampshire, Allegra received her B.A. from Williams College and her M.F.A. from Arizona State University. Her stories and essays have been published in New England Review, Gettysburg Review, The Missouri Review, The Threepenny Review, and elsewhere. Her first book, Of This New World, won the 2016 John Simmons Short Fiction Award. She is the recipient of two Pushcart Prizes, as well as fellowships and grants from The Virginia G. Piper Center for Creative Writing, the Jentel Artist Residency Program, the Lucas Artist Residency Program, The Elizabeth George Foundation, and the U.S. Fulbright Commission. An instructor for the Inprint Writers Workshops and the Martha’s Vineyard Institute for Creative Writing, she currently lives in Houston, Texas.

• New England Review - http://www.nereview.com/2015/03/05/behind-the-byline-allegra-hyde/

  Behind the Byline | Allegra Hyde

  Allegra Hyde_author photo_2015
  Allegra Hyde

  Welcome to “Behind the Byline,” the column in which we share conversations with current NER writers in all genres.

  This month, NER fiction reader Rachel Mullis speaks with author Allegra Hyde.

  RM: “Shark Fishing” (which appears in NER 35.4) is a haunting meditation on humanity’s relationship with our environment, spanning centuries through the lens of one small island in the Bahamas. What inspired you to write it?

  AH: I’ve wanted to write about climate change for a while. Sometimes I question why I’m sitting at a desk all day making up stories when I could be marching through the streets, waving banners, chaining myself to trees. So in a way the story is the product of my guilt. It’s also a product of my uncertainty: an attempt to illuminate an uncertain future with events of the past. The protagonist, like me, is trying to understand how best to address an environmental crisis that can feel overwhelming.

  RM: The story reveals fascinating details about Eleuthera’s history. I’m curious what your research process looked like.

  AH: I’ve travelled to Eleuthera twice, once as an undergraduate studying renewable energy, and once through a teaching fellowship in Human Ecology. Both trips gave me a chance to observe Eleutheran culture—the fish fries, the Rake and Scrape music, the multi-hour church services—as well as the island’s history. You see history everywhere. It’s inscribed in the landscape. You can walk through abandoned resorts, drive past empty grain silos and colonial architecture, scuba dive in shipwrecks. Even poking around a beach, you might find pieces of Lucayan pottery, hundreds of years old. So by exploring Eleuthera, I was immersed in these layers of overlapping history. Those experiences accounted for much of my research, or at least gave me places to start. I read plenty of books as well. There is a small library of Bahamian history stacked around my desk.

  RM: In addition to publishing stories and serving as prose editor at Hayden’s Ferry Review, you are finishing up an MFA at Arizona State University. Any new projects planned post-graduation?

  AH: One of the things I struggled with while writing “Shark Fishing” was saying everything I wanted to say within a reasonable page length. Even around 8,000 words, the piece often felt like it was bursting at the seams. Maybe that’s one of the reasons I opted for a fragmentary structure: to let the white space speak for what I couldn’t fit. There still seems to be more to write, though, so I’ve started working on a novel-length version of the story. Stay tuned.

  RM: You curate quite an impressive collection of similes on allegrahyde.com. What draws you to comparison above other figures of speech?

  AH: There are some simile haters out there—Kafka said “they describe much, but prove nothing”—but to me, a good simile is as delightful as a well-trained bunny, as useful as aluminum foil in an alien invasion, and as indispensable as the pickle that comes with a grilled cheese sandwich.

  ♦♦♦

  Allegra Hyde’s short stories and essays have appeared, in addition to NER, in Missouri Review, North American Review, Chattahoochee Review, and elsewhere. She curates similes at www.allegrahyde.com.

• Portsmouth Review - http://portsmouthreview.com/interview-local-author-allegra-hyde/

  INTERVIEW WITH LOCAL AUTHOR ALLEGRA HYDE
  REBECCA SKANE NEW ENGLAND AUTHOR INTERVIEWS 0 COMMENTS SEPTEMBER 23, 2016
  Author Allegra Hyde is a local novelist hailing from Peterborough, New Hampshire. Her debut book is already an award-winning achievement.

  Tell me a little bit about who you are and where you live.

  I’m the author of the short story collection, Of This New World, which won the 2016 John Simmons Short Fiction Award. I’m a bit of a utopia-enthusiast, so much of my writing connects to notions of paradise pursued or lost. I also travel a lot—I actually spent the last year living in Bulgaria and right now I’m in Houston—but the beautiful town of Peterborough, New Hampshire is my home base.

  Of This New World by Allegra Hyde
  Order on Amazon

  Are there any favorite local spots you like to visit, ones that inspire your creativity?

  One of my favorite places in Peterborough is Cunningham Pond, especially on summer evenings after the crowds thin out and the water has been warmed by sunshine. I’ve always found swimming to be a great way to think through stories.

  Wow us with shock value. Is there anything about you that would surprise readers?

  I have double-jointed elbows.

  What interested you to become a writer rather than something else such as neurosurgeon?

  For a long time, I wanted to be a documentary filmmaker. Then I apprenticed with a famous documentarian and witnessed first hand how much time was spent fundraising compared to actually making films. So I decided to try my hand at writing instead. It was still a way to reassemble aspects of reality into interesting narratives. It was also a lot cheaper.

  If you could spend a day with any author, living or dead – who would it be and why?

  Gertrude Stein would be my first pick. She would, no doubt, have lots to say and would say those things in an inexplicable yet brilliant manner. And, since she was such an influential mentor to so many writers and artists, I would love to be taken under her wing.

  Does the area in which you live provide influence in your writing? How so?

  I think my hometown of Peterborough crops up in my writing in obvious and less obvious ways. I have written several stories directly inspired by life in a small town, but I’ve also written stories set in places like Naples or even Mars, where concepts of community and belonging still play a central role.

  What is the most critical piece of advice you would give to new authors?

  Revise. Revise. Revise. Revise. Revise.

  Coming up with a title can be difficult. Tell me how you came up with yours.

  Since my book, Of This New World, offers an assortment of utopia-themed stories, using a quote from John Milton’s Paradise Lost as a title seemed like the perfect way to frame that idea.

  Are there more books coming from you in the future? Do tell!

  Right now I’m working on a novel that expands upon the story “Shark Fishing” in the collection. So keep an eye out for that.

  Where can people find more information on you and your projects?

  Check out my website (www.allegrahyde.com) or find me on Twitter (@allegra_hyde).

  125
  Tagged: Allegra Hyde, interview

  Rebecca Skane
  ABOUT REBECCA SKANE
  Rebecca Skane is the self-instated editor-in-chief for the Portsmouth Review. She holds a Bachelor of the Arts degree from Lawrence University in Wisconsin and resides in Portsmouth, NH with her husband and two children. She is the founder of The Portsmouth Book Club which boasts over 1,000 members. She also doubles as a professional escapist. Her genres are scifi and fantasy, both adult and young adult - but she often reads outside of her preferred genres. You can follow her on GoodReads.

• Chicago Review of Books - https://chireviewofbooks.com/2016/11/07/allegra-hyde-wants-fiction-to-matter-as-much-as-our-votes/

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  Allegra Hyde Wants Fiction to Matter As Much As Our Votes
  Posted on November 7, 2016 by Amy Brady
  9781609384432_4bcbc-1Earlier this fall, Allegra Hyde published her debut short-story collection, Of This New World, to great acclaim (see our review here). Each story focuses on a new beginning of sorts—the Garden of Eden, an environmentalist commune in the Bahamas, a colony on Mars—together illuminating both the potential and limits of utopian idealism. Funny, lyrical, and at times deeply moving, Of This New World is hard to categorize. It’s at once science fiction and fabulism, as much an exploration of communal optimism as a meditation on individual humility, doubt, and compassion. In short, there’s nothing quite like it.
  In our interview, we discussed Of This New World, as well as Hyde’s writing process, her interest in climate change, and how living in New Hampshire has shaped not only her politics, but her talents as a writer.
  Amy Brady: One thing I love about this collection is that it’s filled with communities that most people would think of as having nothing in common (Shakers and Mars colonists, for example). What inspired you to look in so many directions (back and forward in time, up to the stars and down toward Earth) in one collection?
  Allegra Hyde: I’ve been obsessed with the idea of utopia for many years. What draws people to seek paradise? What keeps them from finding it? This interest naturally emerged in my fiction through stories specifically about intentional communities, as well as in stories about the individual pursuit of ideals. I wrote about many different types of people—from Shakers to Mars colonists—because I wanted to consider the implications of utopian thinking from different angles and perspectives. Living in a utopian community means different things for parents than it does for children, for instance. Or for who lives inside a community and who lives just beyond the border. I tried to cover a lot of ground in Of This New World in an effort to present a holistic narrative.
  Amy Brady: Of This New World brims with anxieties about climate change and the future of humanity. In what ways do these subjects interest you beyond fiction?
  Allegra Hyde: It is terribly important, in my view, for writers and artists to direct their work toward issues like climate change—issues that are much easier to ignore than confront. Our role is to look closely at what others find uncomfortable, to aestheticize what might otherwise be invisible. I also try to engage with issues beyond the page. A few weeks ago, for instance, I attended a rally protesting the Dakota Access Pipeline. We gathered in downtown Houston—“the belly of the beast,” as one of the other protestors said. I never feel like I’m doing enough, though. There’s so much work to be done.
  Amy Brady: What do you make of the recent spate of climate fiction (or “cli-fi”) that’s emerged in recent years? Do you think it’s a bona fide new genre of literature or a fleeting trend? Or something else?
  Allegra Hyde: I’m guessing “cli-fi” is here to stay. What will be interesting to watch, however, is how this kind of fiction evolves alongside our rapidly changing world. Is climate-fiction going to become more and more darkly dystopic? Or is it going to serve as a vehicle for imagining solutions?
  Amy Brady: You live in New Hampshire—arguably one of America’s most important states in an election year. Has living there informed the way you write about politics or political ideas, even ones that relate to fictional worlds like the ones found in this collection?
  Allegra Hyde: Ha! Granite-Staters, as we New Hampshire residents call ourselves, may have a bit of an ego when it comes to our political importance. It has never occurred to me, though, that my home state may have shaped the political elements present in Of This New World. Maybe it has? In New Hampshire, we have this sense that our vote genuinely matters. We consider ourselves first-in-the-nation (the Iowa caucus can go to hell). We can swing red or blue. Our motto is “Live Free or Die.” Politicians try to court us by visiting our greasy little diners and making speeches in front of our quaint town halls. They make us feel important. Maybe I’m willing to broach political subjects in my fiction because I’m bringing a little New Hampshire pomposity to the page: I like to believe my fiction matters as much as my vote.
  Amy Brady: This collection frequently crosses genre boundaries, becoming science fiction in one moment and then historical fiction in the next. Was it a conscious decision to genre jump?
  Allegra Hyde: I took my first fiction class about eight years ago. I started writing seriously about five years ago. In some ways, I am still finding my “voice.” This interest in experimentation is reflected in the stylistic variation you see Of This New World. I enjoy the challenge of writing in different modes. It pushes me to work different literary muscles, which, I hope, will ultimately make me a stronger writer. It’s possible I may never find a style that is definitively Allegra Hyde. I’m okay with that. I admire writers who continue to evolve, like Denis Johnson. He could be writing Jesus’ Son over and over. Instead he’s writing all kinds of novels, plays, poetry, screenplays, and even nonfiction. I would love to continue pushing the boundaries of genre, style, and form as I mature as an author.
  Amy Brady: How do you know when a story is working?
  Allegra Hyde: If I know where a story is headed before I write it, the story usually doesn’t work out. If there’s no excitement built in for me as an author, there probably won’t be any for my readers. My best stories are often the ones that surprise me while I’m writing them—whether in turns of language, plot, or form. When a story is really working, it gives me butterflies. It’s like meeting a crush: there’s chemistry between me and the tangle of text. Half the excitement is in not knowing where things are headed but still hoping for a good time.
  Amy Brady: What draws you to the idea of “starting over,” which, in a way, is what all of the characters in your collection are doing?
  Allegra Hyde: I’m fairly young, but I feel like I’ve already lived many lives. I’ve been a small town girl who never heard of sushi and I’ve been a globetrotter dining on Tako Sunomono in Singapore; I’ve been an athlete who trained for hours twice a day and a hippie who couldn’t remember the day of the week. I’m grateful I’ve had the opportunity to try on so many different shoes. Maybe it’s an American thing: the sense that reinvention is always possible. I find fresh starts thrilling because they are a meeting point of optimism and fear, of past failures and future possibilities. Our lives can fundamentally change in hugely dramatic ways, but when that happens we discover the steady aspects of ourselves—which are, of course, what really define us.
  FICTION – SHORT STORIES, SPECULATIVE
  Of This New World by Allegra Hyde
  University of Iowa Press
  Published October 1, 2016
  ISBN 9781609384432
  Allegra Hyde’s stories have appeared in the Missouri Review, New England Review, Alaska Quarterly Review, the Gettysburg Review, and the Pushcart Prize XL: Best of the Small Presses. She lives in Peterborough, New Hampshire.

• Electric Lit - https://electricliterature.com/allegra-hyde-on-seeking-a-better-world-ebfd2fc7eb67

  Allegra Hyde on Seeking a Better World
  The author talks utopias, Shakers and white spaces.

  The narrator of “Shark Fishing,” the first story in Allegra Hyde’s debut collection Of This New World, asks herself, in one of the book’s most moving moments, “Who was I except someone who’d always been willing to dream?” The collection finds this narrator as it finds many of its protagonists: trying to navigate the knots between intention and result, promise and fulfillment, resistance and pragmatics. Each story, in its own way, is asking deft questions about the possibility of improvement, both on the micro and macro level, and where other writers could have fallen into didactic or moralistic traps, Hyde’s stories move effortlessly and gracefully, never once causing the reader to feel as though she has her authorial thumb pressed on the scale. It’s no surprise, then, that the University of Iowa Press saw fit to award Of This New World the 2016 John Simmons Short Fiction Award, a prestige visited upon, in recent years, writers like Marie-Helene Bertino, Jennine Capó Crucet, and Chad Simpson.
  It enriched my reading experience even further to talk via email with Allegra Hyde about this percipient, lush, and hopeful set of stories.
  Vincent Scarpa: What about idealism and its relationship — or lack thereof — to paradise felt ripe for exploration as the writer you are? Was there something you were setting out to magnify or explode from within that space, or was your approach a kind of neutral inquisition?
  Allegra Hyde: Utopias — their pursuit and implementation — have obsessed me for many years. Or maybe haunted is a better word. I think it has a lot to do with my own perfectionist tendencies. I’m drawn to examples of people trying to live up to an ideal, in spite of the challenges, because I relate to that hunger for realizing a vision in the face of practical concerns.
  I also think we’ve entered a ripe cultural moment for utopian thinking: sea levels are rising, a right-wing demagogue could win the US presidency, scenes of violence flood our news channels. We have an opportunity, here and now, to choose between despairing over an apocalyptic future or actively considering what a better world might look like — even if it seems pie in the sky — because we’ll never reach that reality without first daring to imagine what it might be.
  We have an opportunity, here and now, to choose between despairing over an apocalyptic future or actively considering what a better world might look like…
  VS: The narrator of “Free Love” says, of her off-the-grid hippie father’s plan to live in a houseboat and sail the world, that it sounds “spectacularly imprecise, gloriously underdeveloped.” This seems like the nature of most plans toward utopia, and I wonder if you think it’s the chief reason they fail. Or is there some larger force of impossibility one must contend with when trying to build a utopia, no matter the scale?
  AH: I think the Anna Karenina principle applies here: “Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” An imprecise execution of ideals might spell the demise of some utopian endeavors, but others have been spectacularly organized. Take the Shakers: at the height of their influence in the mid-nineteenth century, they had 6,000 members in something like twenty different communities. In Shaker life, each day was carefully orchestrated; the spiritual attitude they brought to labor made them economically viable. There was just the question of sex. How does an abstaining population carry on? Recruitment and orphan adoption can only go so far. If old age didn’t exist, maybe the Shakers would still be going strong. But they’re down to three members up in Maine. The aspect of their ethos that made them so productive — the curtailing of human desire — also made their endeavor ephemeral.
  I say ephemeral instead of “a failure” because I have trouble applying the latter to these types of social experiments. Although a utopian community might not last in a physical sense, its espoused ideals may stick around longer than its members and have a far-reaching impact on the broader society. The Shakers, for instance, had all these breakthrough inventions — like the clothespin and the circular saw — which we still use. And their design principles of simplicity and efficiency are still visible all over New England.
  Or — returning to “Free Love” — consider the proliferation of hippie communes in the 1960s. Most back-to-the-landers eventually went back to more normal lives and jobs, but their ideals of sexual fluidity and their respect for nature still continue to resonate. Utopian experiments, viable or not in the long-term, can still influence mainstream culture.
  VS: Something I admire about these stories is that so many of them have an active political consciousness. I don’t know if you agree, but that seems to be something that’s all but vanished from so much of contemporary fiction. I’m not sure if it has something to do with the fear of being didactic or not, but it was refreshing to see you take on issues like global warming, PTSD, immigration, and so forth. Did you have any trepidation in tackling these issues? Is there something unique to fiction that allows such exploration?
  AH: I did not set out to tackle political issues. I would never want to write — or read — fiction that tries to tell a reader what to think. I did, however, set out to write stories that felt meaningful. If I’m afraid of anything as a writer, it’s of becoming frivolous and self-indulgent, especially since I spend so much time alone in a room making stuff up. The gift of fiction, however, is that it can mirror back aspects of our society that might otherwise stay hidden. Making PTSD present in a story, for instance, is about recognizing this issue as part of the fabric of our daily lives. Twenty veterans a day commit suicide. My story “VFW Post 1492,” about a depressed and disabled veteran, isn’t taking a political stance so much as bearing witness to our modern reality.
  VS: One of my favorite stories in the collection is “Shark Fishing,” which is a clear-eyed look both into the way colonization calibrates a place forever and at activism faced with the dangers of being a variety of colonization itself, despite ostensibly good intentions. Like “Delight,” another terrific story, it made me think a lot about the fact that utopian visions are by no means universal, and that a genuine desire to do good can so often be at cross purposes with what is presently capable. I’d love to hear you talk a bit about how this story came to be.
  AH: When I was twenty-two, just out of college, I went to work at an environmental leadership school in the Bahamas. It was an inspiring place, one that echoed my own environmental ethics through its educational work, scientific research, and sustainable infrastructure. However, as I began to learn more about the local history — a history that included Puritan settlers, vast plantations, and luxury resorts — I began to see a pattern emerging. Initiatives on the island often started with great promise but ultimately ended in exploitation. I began questioning whether I was participating in the continuation of that cycle. I believed — and still believe — that it’s important to address climate change with the utmost urgency, but I also believe in respecting the integrity of an existing culture. “Shark Fishing” was an effort to explore the nuances beyond obvious labels of right and wrong.
  VS: I was thinking of the writer Jim Shepard — one of my favorites — as I read these stories, without having yet seen that he in fact is a favorite of yours and gave such a lovely blurb. I think he came to mind because so many of the stories here, like Shepard’s stories, feel built on a solid foundation of research — whether it’s the history of Eleuthera in “Shark Fishing,” the botanical language of “Bury Me,” or the exquisite details of Mexico we find in “Flowers For Prisoners.” Can you talk about the role research plays in your writing practice? How much do you do and when is enough? How do you decide what makes it into the story and what doesn’t?
  AH: I had the good fortune to study with Jim Shepard as an undergraduate. He was a brilliant and generous teacher, and he implanted some ideas about writing fiction that continue to define how I work. Having once caught a glimpse of his writing desk — surrounded by books and research materials — I realized that a short story can be the synthesis of so much unseen knowledge. When I research now, much of what I learn doesn’t make it onto the page. Nevertheless, it still feels important to hold a breadth of information in my mind as I write — whether it’s botanical language or Mexican geography — because research can infuse a story’s style and structure in profound yet invisible ways.
  That isn’t to say the research that makes it onto the page isn’t significant. I try to use the material that will encourage a reader to trust me, to follow me into a fictional reality. I also sometimes share information in stories that seems too interesting to be buried by history — though that can be a slippery slope.
  VS: I’d be remiss not to talk about structure, because these stories are so elegantly and masterfully architectured. Sometimes I think a good short story can mask a somewhat flimsy or clunky structure, but I think great stories are always working on the level of the line and the level of the whole. This is something I think you do so well in a story like “Ephemera,” where we’re switching between three distinct protagonists with three distinct varieties of loneliness. I wonder if you could talk a bit about story-building, and if structure is something you have an idea of going in or if it’s something that the movement of the language, line by line, necessitates?
  AH: During the drafting process for “Ephemera,” the story’s structure evolved organically alongside the progression of plot and character. There was, in other words, an editorial feedback loop. The structure changed line by line. However, for a story like “Americans on Mars!” I went in with a distinct structure I wanted to pursue, having been inspired by the work of Amy Fusselman in The Pharmacist’s Mate (which I highly recommend). So in that case, an existing structure dictated the way the narrative emerged.
  Regardless of how a story comes into fruition, the final stages of revision are a very visual process for me. I have an art background, so I tend to bring elements of design to my stories. For a piece like, “Ephemera,” I became very conscientious of the shape of the braided narrative, the way paragraphs of differing lengths played against one another, the harmonies of text and white space. To speak in generalizations, I admire the talent poets have at positioning text. They are often more aware than prose writers are of how white space can be a living, breathing part of a piece. With prose, conventions dictate that your writing is essentially a word soup that gets poured into the shape of a magazine page or a book layout. I tend to write with lots of paragraph breaks in my stories, in part because its something I can do as a prose writer to influence the visual structure of my stories within the conventions of the genre.
  VS: You’re such a great practitioner of the short story. I’d love to hear other practitioners you admire, and also what you’re working on next, now that the collection is in the world.
  AH: I’m bursting at the seams with my admiration for Jen George. Her first book, a collection of stories called The Baby Sitter at Rest, is out this October through Dorothy, a publishing project. George writes about the threshold between youthful naiveté and adult despair. Her fiction is vivaciously detailed, fierce and funny, and deftly captures that sense that everyone other than you knows what’s going on. I want everyone to read this book!
  In terms of short story standbys, Amy Hempel’s writing has taught me a lot. The architecture of her fiction always works in elegant symbiosis with the story being told, and she’s so good at blending fact into fiction. Also, once at AWP, she touched my arm as she attempted to navigate a crowd on her way to panel. This felt like a blessing.
  Of This New World may be out of my hands and loose in the world, but it serves as the foundation for my next project: a novel that expands and reworks “Shark Fishing.” Though this story is the longest in the collection, I haven’t been able to shake the sense that there’s more narrative territory to explore. So I’m returning to the Bahamas, in a way, trying to continue addressing climate change and what it means to seek a better world.

Of This New World
Publishers Weekly.
263.34 (Aug. 22, 2016): p82.
COPYRIGHT 2016 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Full Text:
Of This New World
Allegra Hyde. Univ. of Iowa, $16 trade paper (124p) ISBN 978­1­60938­443­2
In her sensitively constructed debut collection, Hyde weaves 12 short stories into an uplifting examination
of fractured utopias­­paradoxical and imaginary worlds that each generation has failed to establish since
losing access to Paradise. The opening story "After the Beginning" offers a window into Eve's mindset after
her expulsion from Eden and sets the tone for the collection by mixing her shame­fueled resilience with
moments of startling humor, and with an unexpectedly hopeful outlook in the face of ultimate loss.
Roaming through historical and futuristic landscapes, the stories explore a dizzying array of settings: a "free
love" hippie commune; an eco­activism outpost on an island in the Bahamas; a cross­country attempt to
recover a lost child; lushly gardened, heavily gated houses in San Miguel de Aliende, Mexico; a Martian
colony with candidates recruited to breed a new generation of humans, leaving those on Earth to scrabble in
the ruins they've made of their world. Hyde's luminous prose and ability to inject meaning with subtlety
keeps the collection on the darkly humorous edge of melancholy. Her characters face the encroaching
darkness of the world head on, yet somehow continue to see a way out, finding that space where disaster
opens innumerable possibilities to carve a new world from the ruins. This collection presents an appealing
selection of diverse worlds from a bright and bold new voice in fiction. (Oct.)
Source Citation (MLA 8
th Edition)
"Of This New World." Publishers Weekly, 22 Aug. 2016, p. 82+. General OneFile,
go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?
p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA461609270&it=r&asid=77fd9d3f813adeeb22babcb3ce588b38.
Accessed 13 May 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A461609270

• Library Journal
  http://reviews.libraryjournal.com/2016/08/books/fiction/short-fiction-for-fall-key-collections-from-18-authors-both-veteran-and-new/
  Word count: 163

  Hyde, Allegra. Of This New World. Univ. of Iowa. Oct. 2016. 124p. ISBN 9781609384432. pap. $16. SHORT STORIES
  ofthisneworld.jpg82916In Hyde’s opening story, an exasperated, take-charge Eve rallies sulky Adam while secretly acknowledging that she will “feel shame and be bent by it.” This brief piece is both tough and magical, like all that follows. Hyde frequently explores teetering idealism, from the Caribbean combination eco–base camp and school run by a former Navy SEAL to the teenager rescued from her parents’ hippie commune to an Englishman upended by 19th-century American Shakers. Hyde is good at developing her ideas fully, though occasionally a piece is more portrait than story; the tale of one young woman’s move away from a former best friend is so achingly memorable one wants more. In the end, though, we see “the sheer horror, the ecstasy of being alive.” VERDICT A luscious collection (and John Simmons Short Fiction Award winner) promising more good things to come.

• Kirkus
  https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/allegra-hyde/of-this-new-world/
  Word count: 359

  OF THIS NEW WORLD
  by Allegra Hyde
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  KIRKUS REVIEW
  Thirteen stories reveal utopia and what we must give up to get there.

  Hyde’s scope is wide in this slim volume, as is her style. There's a biblical tale, a historical fiction, a fairy tale reinvention, and a futuristic dystopia. In each distinct setting, characters yearn for the same things. In “The Future Consequences of Present Actions,” we meet Charles Lane, who “has always believed in the perfectibility of man.” After the failure of Fruitlands, a transcendental commune where he lived for two years, Charles moves with his son to a Shaker village. This would-be paradise also proves inadequate, but this time, Charles learns too late the high cost of entry. Rex in “Americans on Mars!” makes a similar bargain for his utopia when he leaves his brothers behind for a chance at a better life on another planet. Inevitably, Hyde’s characters come up against the nature of hope. The narrator of “Ephemera” states it simply, “It’s a dull sickness...one they both can’t bear to cure.” We see this play out at an environmental oasis, “part school, part eco-base camp,” at a free love commune, and inside a city with a registered trademark for a name, Delight®. Structurally, many stories interrupt the main plot with fragments of a separate text, like lab notes or religious teachings. Sometimes, as in “Bury Me,” the technique can feel formulaic. The secondary text provides easy, predictable metaphors. But just as often, it resonates with and against the characters’ arcs. In “The Future Consequences of Present Actions,” the Shaker teachings give Charles Lane’s suffering a weight that feels real.

  Hyde portrays forceful, painful collisions between reality and expectation.

  Pub Date: Oct. 1st, 2016
  ISBN: 978-1-60938-443-2
  Page count: 124pp
  Publisher: Univ. of Iowa
  Review Posted Online: Aug. 3rd, 2016
  Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15th, 2016

• Heavy Feather Review
  https://heavyfeatherreview.com/2016/09/14/of-this-new-world-by-allegra-hyde/
  Word count: 788

  OF THIS NEW WORLD by Allegra Hyde
  Heavy FeatherSeptember 14, 2016book reviews, fictionPost navigation
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  Of This New World, by Allegra Hyde. Iowa City, Iowa: University of Iowa Press, October 2016. 124 pages. $16.00, paper.

  All writers want to create new worlds. Good writers want to explore new worlds. Great writers want to expose new worlds. In Of This New World, the readers are exposed to twelve beautiful worlds and the inhabitants who survive in them. Allegra Hyde has her fingers on the pulse of today and the particular patterns humanity follows time and time again. Bookended by a tale of Eden and a vision of Mars, this collection creates worlds that act as characters and reminds us of the hunger humanity needs to control when it comes to the world we want.

  The short story collection, a winner of the John Simmons Short Fiction Award, has a chronological feel to it that, intentional or not, creates a sort of super thread linking the stories together. It begins, fittingly enough, with the original utopia of Eden. “After the Beginning” has a post-modern Biblical feel about it, opening with the mood setting line: “After the beginning, even seven days out, my husband still makes me crazy.” Imagine a world where Eve might not enjoy the company of Adam. From the start, Hyde is focusing on the world we create for ourselves, not the world found for us. This isn’t necessarily an easy thing to do, considering the Garden of Eden is one of the oldest stories we tell each other and yet Hyde manages to breathe new life into it. This is one of the noticeable traits within all the stories.

  “Shark Fishing” might be the signature story in the collection. Camp Hope, in many ways, seems to be the progressive-tilted utopia we’d love to create. It’s an idealistic crusade with positive goals, it’s an actual world building experience. Hyde doesn’t merely create the world, she shows how people can slowly destroy it with their own sense of control, no matter how morally “right” it may come from. She doesn’t ask easy questions and gather stock responses. Hopes and dreams are necessarily to help us create a better world, but they shouldn’t be the driving force. It has a George Saunders future-reality feel to it, a world very possible although not advised. The story also acts as a reflection that one person’s utopia isn’t necessarily the utopia of someone else. A test question early on in the story confirms this:

  Test question #3: And what is it—your idea of paradise—what is it exactly?

  (a) The red petals of hibiscus flowers pressed closely like the folds of a lady’s skirt.
  (b) A quivering Casuarina pine, shaking free a thousand needles.
  (c) Those many-footed mangroves, stooped and wading through their salty parlors.

  Or maybe:

  (d) None of the above.

  The narrator sees that while Camp Hope has the best intentions, it settles into a two steps forward, one step back kind of mentality. The world would be perfect, it seems, if it only worked in this very specific way. It has no use for other views of it. This is the foundational problem with creating worlds, for everything you make, you equally destroy something else.

  It’s difficult to continue reading after that revelation, although Hyde is able to continue exploring new ground of the very worlds she set on exposing. There are worlds both deeply personal and worlds that are infinitely expansive. She breaks old worlds to create new ones. “Delight®” is a cautionary tale of over-marketed imaginations. “Americans on Mars!” is a futuristic story about the outsider left behind in a brave new world. There is a sense of urgency in these stories, that while we can control the creation of the world around us, we should do so warily, with healthy skepticism and responsibility. We owe it to the world to act accordingly. In a world of impossible tomorrows and yesterdays, Allegra Hyde manages to keep us grounded with Of This New World.

  Buy Of This New World at Amazon

  Buy Of This New World at Powell’s Books

  Buy Of This New World at University of Iowa Press

  ***

  Nick Sweeney lives in Lindenhurst, New York. He is allergic to dogs and chocolate and yes, he knows how terrible it must be.

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• Chicago Review of Books
  https://chireviewofbooks.com/2016/10/05/of-this-new-world-heralds-an-exciting-new-voice-in-speculative-fiction/
  Word count: 939

  ‘Of This New World’ Heralds An Exciting New Voice in Speculative Fiction
  Posted on October 5, 2016 by Sara Cutaia
  9781609384432_4bcbc-1When I looked at the table of contents for Allegra Hyde’s collection Of This New World, I thought it resembled a timeline—from the very first humans on Earth to the last, and then those beyond. As I traversed this literary chronology, I found that the characters of every era and background all seemed to be reaching for a second chance. From the Garden of Eden to the fledgling colonies of Mars, these stories wrestle with finding that ideal starting-over point and the fundamental question about the existence of paradise.
  Blurbs for this collection harp on the theme of utopia, but I found more footing in the characters’ desires for redemption and new beginnings. The opening story, for example, “After the Beginning,” deals with the Garden of Eden and Adam and Eve’s fate as outcasts. Indeed, the Garden was the definition of a utopia, yet Hyde’s compact prose focuses on Eve’s determination to move forward instead of “[feeling] shame and [being] bent by it.” There is less emphasis on the Garden that was lost than the urging of Adam to “get over this.” How gripping, too, the idea of Adam and Eve learning to survive, having failed to obey the only rule in the entire world. It is chilling to see through Eve’s eyes and to feel the isolation and the guilt.
  My favorite story of the collection, “VFW Post 1492,” drops us into the middle of a date between Jasper and Evelyn in Istanbul. After a few visceral and intimate paragraphs, we learn that we are watching it through the eyes of Jasper’s twin brother, Sam. Having returned from Iraq with “no legs below the knee, a missing arm, a paralyzed left side,” Sam must now suffer the adventures and pleasures of his brother, no matter the distance between them. He sits in his motorized chair back in America, but experiences Jasper’s emotions. “Sam sees it all—eyes open, eyes closed—he can’t not see.” The topic of the war and fighting for a version of paradise (or at least, a better world) is the tie-in to the utopian theme, but again I think Sam’s suffering and Jasper’s linked, physical reaction at the story’s breathtaking climax speak to an inner desperation for a second chance. Hyde’s exploration in this story covers so much ground, it’s stunning, even in its brevity.
  Equally as captivating is “Bury Me.” Sally’s mother has died, and this is the catalyst that brings Maddy and a handful of Sally’s ex-boyfriends together for the funeral after a long absence. Pressured into staying the night because “it would mean a lot to [Sally] if you stayed,” Maddy finds herself reliving memories of a friendship that she no longer recognizes. There are knock-you-out sentences that describe Sally and Maddy’s old relationship, “[we] seemed to float untouchable, reckless to the point of elegance,” and Hyde’s prose flourishes with the space to unfold grief and regret and the nostalgic bonds of girl-dom. Stylistically, this story breaks form to include scientific notes about pine trees and their growth patterns, but everything has a purpose, and Hyde embeds a parallel meaning so poignant that you’ll want to start the story over immediately after you finish.
  As if there weren’t enough unfair shots to the sentimental heart, “Ephemera” follows a mother, Vera, as she searches in vain for her daughter that has gone missing. She winds up at Carlos Pete’s old and cluttered house, rooming with him and a boy named Smythson. There is a unique bond between the three of them, and soon Smythson is smitten with the distracted and older Vera: “Laying eyes on [her] was like reeling in the kickback of a .45 Magnum.” Revealing the sad past of one character only adds weight to the inevitable future of another as Vera and the two men part ways—for good? Hyde’s craft is at its best here as she stretches time and leaves breadcrumbs of hints and heartbreak from start to finish.
  The collection ends on a far-reaching note with “Americans on Mars!” Colonization of another planet has long been the topic for many writers, but Hyde once again narrows her focus to the individuals rather than the idealization of humanity. Rex and Tanya fake a “married application” so they can make the trip to the red planet and start populating the new world. But once he has made the irreversible flight, Rex can’t do his part. With constant reminders of the hell back on Earth and an unhealthy longing for his brothers, it is all Rex can do to not go crazy in his foreign situation. With the heaviest of punches, Hyde ends her debut collection with a future “thick with unknowables.”
  Though other stories in the collection like “Shark Fishing” and “Delight®” deal very specifically with paradises (either in a struggle to create it or watching it crumble), Of This New World finds its life in the hearts of those who seek redemption. A few short pieces pepper the collection with their strangeness in plot, but Hyde never relents in her use of language or evocation of emotion. The John Simmons Short Fiction Award well deserved, Allegra Hyde is a must-read new voice in literature.
  FICTION – LITERARY, SHORT STORIES
  Of This New World by Allegra Hyde
  University of Iowa Press
  Published October 1, 2016
  ISBN 9781609384432

• The Adroit Journal
  http://www.theadroitjournal.org/blog/2016/10/21/review-redefining-home-in-allegra-hydes-of-this-new-world
  Word count: 974

  REVIEW: REDEFINING HOME IN ALLEGRA HYDE'S OF THIS NEW WORLD (UNIVERSITY OF IOWA PRESS, 2016) /OCTOBER 23, 2016

  By ARAM MRJOIAN | REVIEWER.
  University of Iowa Press, 2016.
  University of Iowa Press, 2016.

  Whether imagining the alien, nocturnal noises that await Adam and Eve outside of Eden or the public humiliation of experiencing erectile dysfunction while colonizing Mars, Allegra Hyde’s debut orbits one essential question – how do we define home? Over the course of a dozen stories, Hyde takes readers to a Caribbean campus obsessed with sustainability, a house repurposed as an antique shop, a Utopian small town necessitating its own registered trademark®, and failing communes inundated in acid, among others. Within these bizarre landscapes, Hyde’s characters struggle with the elusiveness of paradise. They partake in the quotidian sojourn for sanctuary, though—despite the fact that many physical spaces appear in Hyde’s work—her creation of the idyll is not constricted to boring Pleasantvilles. None of the settings embody trite expectations of home. Whereas fiction often attempts to take the known comforts of normal life and disrupt them, Hyde’s collection redefines expectations of comfort altogether. In many ways, these stories act against the traditional interpretations of Utopia, pushing away the universal urges for safety, stability, and routine.

  It should be no surprise that, with a balance of diverse settings and topical steadiness, Of This New World was the 2016 winner of The John Simmons Short Fiction Award. Judge Bennett Sims called the collection, “an ambitious and memorable debut,” noting its thematic cohesiveness of the “ultimate Miltonic lesson.” That is to say, these stories undoubtedly belong together, as they braid related spiritual conundrums among disparate geographies. Each story has an inexorable sense of place, but the long-term security of the setting is always in question. Home is stripped to the bare necessities of its definition or skewed into a bizarre dreamland, so that the common interpretations of its terminology become obfuscated.

  “It was the strangest funeral I’d ever attended. Sun-soaked—on the old farm field behind Sally’s house—the bereaved dressed in a rainbow of colors, the air sugared with cotton candy and the pangs of a string quartet. A downy white pony for children to ride.” Thus begins “Bury Me,” with a succinct opening that thrashes against the mundane. The doldrums of home are situated in the distance, the comforts of nature disrupted by a peculiar carnival of mourning. As the collection’s title suggests, Eden is always on the horizon, but also in the distant past. Paradise cannot easily be revisited. By exploring this tension, Hyde’s stories serve as points of entry to the ecotones between the familiar and the unknown.

  In the case of “Bury Me,” the ecotone in question seems to be the nebulous era between adolescence and adulthood. Two adult women, Maddy and Sally, are forever bonded over shared college nights of binge drinking and unapologetic one-night stands. Years later, the loss of Sally’s mother reunites the duo for one last attempt at recreating the bacchanalia of their youth. Yet, both women must address the impossibility of recreating a treasured feeling of freedom that in retrospect never actually existed. In this way, “Bury Me” not only confronts the physicality of home, but also examines how often home is lost in the past, solely found in hazy, idyllic memories.

  In “Ephemera,” a rambling mother named Vera finds home while searching for her lost daughter through a rundown “cowboy town.” Fatigued from months of canvasing, she holes up with an aging man named Carlos who has transformed his mother’s house into an antiques shop. What begins for Vera as a quick night’s sleep soon falls into routine as she rethinks her daughter’s disappearance and helps Carlos move on from the family homestead he’s never been able to sell. This setup allows Hyde to consider several elements the definition of home in one narrative. Family dynamics are morphed and reshaped, essential household items are sold off day by day. Does paradise require forks and frying pans, or can it be more abstract? The relationship between home and possession seems an unyielding inquiry that Hyde’s stories bring to light.

  It’s important to note Hyde does not rely on motif to propel “Of This New World,” however. Sentence for sentence, this collection is chock-full of audacious prose, passages that are perfect in pitch and in rattling the terrain. The lyrical quality is sharp and one can easily be captivated by the language’s sheer beauty. Hyde’s constructions are precise to say the least—tlet your guard down would be to miss the nuances of fragility, fear, and confusion right beneath the surface.

  Hyde’s underlying message could very well be that isolated geographies only have meaning in the context of the great unknown, and that finding paradise is independent of place altogether. Whether we are natives or foreigners in this in-between space is uncertain. What does seem certain, however, is that globalization through Hyde’s eyes has existed since Adam and Eve, and that the search for Utopia is an ancient quest of rapid-growing importance in the wake of connectivity. The world is shrinking, and everyone is seeking serenity by different means and in different places, but the hope of finding peace is universal. Whether that can be done is yet to be seen.

  ***

  Aram Mrjoian is a regular contributor at Book Riot and previously reviewed Michigan books and literary culture at AwesomeMitten.com. He possesses an English degree from Michigan State University, a graduate level publishing certification from the University of Denver, and is currently working toward an MFA in creative writing at Northwestern University, where he is a reader at TriQuarterly.

• Haydens Ferry Review
  http://haydensferryreview.com/haydensferryreview/2016/11/15/book-review-of-this-new-world-by-allegra-hyde
  Word count: 697

  BOOK REVIEW: OF THIS NEW WORLD BY ALLEGRA HYDE
  Without diving too deep into the current political landscape, it’s fair to say that the question, “What now?” has been asked over and over again since Donald Trump was elected President last week. The question has been asked by many with a sense that the “American experiment” might have reached some kind of an end point.

  To the extent you are worried that observation might be true, Allegra Hyde’s new short story collection, Of This New World, is a very important book.

  Winner of the John Simmons Iowa Short Fiction Award, many—though not all—of these 13 stories focus on failed or misguided utopian schemes. The collection begins with Adam and Eve being cast out of the Garden of Eden and ends with a couple trying to procreate on a colony on Mars.

  These stories could be described as “after the fact.” In each story, Hyde begins with the consequences of idealistic thinking and how these characters must start over and come to some new truth about their lives.

  “Shark Fishing" is about a demagogue who has founded an environmentalist school for rich high schoolers in the Bahamas. “The Future Consequences of Present Actions” is a retelling of the story of Charles Lane, an 18th Century Transcendentalist who founded the Fruitlands commune before becoming disenchanted and joining The Shakers.

  The narrator of “Free Love” sums up the central idea of the collection nicely with the realization that “losing someone you care about doesn’t have to mean losing yourself as well.” Losing the dream that was supposed to take you to the promised land doesn’t mean you can’t find some poignancy and beauty in life.

  There is some hope in that sentiment, but it would be inaccurate to describe this book as hopeful. The stories contain more of a stoic wisdom. In “Ephemera,” the narrator notes, “While Smythson was unsure of plenty—the existence of God, the mechanics of sex—he knew such things were dangerous. Loving and gun-shooting, their dangers never kept people from messing with them.” Que sera sera, you could say.

  In that sense, the book is arguably an anti-Dubliners, which James Joyce described as “a collection of epiphanies.” The characters do learn something by the end of each story, but the realizations are much softer. Each conclusion reached by someone who’s already been burned by their idealism and not quite ready to face their idealistic thinking again.

  Not all the stories fit this mold exactly. “Flowers for Prisoners,” for example, follows a Mexican woman who doesn’t know what has happened to her adopted son as he attempts to cross the border in the United States. Even when the stories aren’t exactly about a failed idealism, there’s a thematic relevance to the stories—the need to strive for something greater than oneself—that makes the exception fit the rule.

  The stories can be very funny a lá George Saunders, but they are less satirical. That sense of humor works well for a book that is less about our current culture than a kind of thinking that has plagued human beings since day one.

  Of This New World is published by University of Iowa Press.
  A native of New Hampshire, Allegra Hyde received her B.A. from Williams College and her M.F.A. from Arizona State University. Her stories and essays have been published in New England Review, Gettysburg Review, The Missouri Review, and many other venues. She is the recipient of a Pushcart Prize, as well as a notable mention in Best American Essays 2015. Roxane Gay selected her work for "The Wigleaf Top 50 [Very] Short Fictions of 2015," and she was a finalist for the 2015 Million Writers Award. She has been awarded fellowships and grants from The Virginia G. Piper Center for Creative Writing, the National University of Singapore, the Jentel Artist Residency Program, The Island School, and the U.S. Fulbright Commission.
  Reviewed by Edward Derbes, prose editor, Hayden's Ferry Review

• Colorado State University
  http://coloradoreview.colostate.edu/reviews/of-this-new-world/
  Word count: 856

  Book Review
  Of This New World
  Fiction
  By Allegra Hyde
  Reviewed By Bradley Bazzle

  University of Iowa Press (2016)
  124 pages
  $10.66
  Buy this book
  Allegra Hyde’s debut collection, Of This New World, is wide-ranging in its content. There’s a story about Adam and Eve, a story about a veteran, and a story about colonists on Mars. Many of the stories involve disillusionment and self-discovery of the type we often find in literary fiction, but there’s a more specific theme that comes up again and again: negligent parenting.

  Many of the stories in Of This New World involve parents who put ideas ahead of people—even their own children. “Free Love” is the story of a young woman who grew up on a commune with her guru father and drug-addled mother and who now finds herself under the same roof as her grouchy nana. The present action of the story consists of the girl trying to make her way at a regular suburban school while thinking back to her old life and wondering if her parents ever think about her. We get the sense they don’t. In a similar vein, the short story “Syndication” shows a girl leading her little brother away from the house where their “doomsday-prepping bandana-wearing parents” are digging their own graves. In “The Future Consequences of Present Actions”—one of the finest stories in the collection—a nineteenth-century widower in search of the perfect religion for his tendency towards self-denial signs away his son to the Shakers. Even the story about Adam and Eve, “After the Beginning,” is, in a sense, about the children of the original negligent parents. The couple finds themselves in a wilderness of chores and shame after their expulsion by God from the “lush ambrosial garden” of Eden. Adam is taking it badly.

  “Shark Fishing,” a standout story that first appeared in New England Review, is premised on the willingness of a certain type of parent to place their children in the hands of a near-stranger for the sake of an “enriching” (i.e. college application-padding) experience such as Outward Bound or Semester at Sea. In “Shark Fishing,” a young activist named Dawn, already losing faith in pamphlets and protests and her life in Brooklyn, finds steady work at Camp Hope, a fledgling school on Eleuthera in the Bahamas. Camp Hope is the brainchild of Roy Adams, “a former Navy SEAL turned born-again tree hugger,” who envisions Camp Hope as “part school, part eco-base camp,” and a sustainable model for the rest of the world. Camp Hope appeals to Dawn’s need for an escape and her idealism, and Roy Adams appeals to her need to please and serve. Dawn’s inherent militancy is revealed over the course of the story, and soon she is Adams’s most valued lieutenant, the only teacher who can be trusted to place Camp Hope first, its students second. Over the course of the story, Dawn, already disillusioned, is disillusioned once again, and yet this is, at its core, a story of self-discovery.

  “Shark Fishing” is one of the more formally adventurous stories in the collection. Dawn’s Camp Hope experience is embedded in a lecture she’s giving at Harvard (everything has worked out for her, if not for Camp Hope or its students) and interwoven with facts about the original settlers. Hyde’s juxtaposition of the original settlers and the Camp Hope staff, who can be thought of as settlers as well, gives the story an additional layer of energy. Other stories in the collection also get their energy from narrative jumps. “VFW Post 1492” cuts back and forth between the boring life of a paraplegic veteran living with his mother and the imagined life of the veteran’s twin—an artist in Istanbul who may or may not be having sex with a mutual friend. By juxtaposing the two storylines, instead of explaining their connection, Hyde leaves open the possibility that the veteran really can experience some semblance of his twin’s consciousness, and may even find consolation there.

  I recommend Of This New World to fans of literary short stories. It has the usual elements: well-developed characters, self-discovery, richly imagined worlds, and the type of un-showy formal experimentation we can expect from winners of the Iowa and John Simmons Short Fiction Awards. It also has a little something extra, and that something, to me, is Hyde’s conspicuous emphasis on parenting. I should admit here that I’m a new parent of a fourteen-month-old daughter, and I can imagine this book as an appropriate gift for expecting parents—a warning of what not to do.

  Bradley Bazzle is the author of the novel Trash Mountain, forthcoming from Red Hen Press. His short stories appear in New England Review, New Ohio Review, Epoch, Web Conjunctions, and elsewhere, and have won awards from Third Coast and The Iowa Review. Some of them can be found at bradleybazzle.com. He lives in Athens, Georgia, with his wife and daughter.