Dantiel W. Moniz writes with such an astonishing force, I don't recall being so excited about a debut short story collection since I read Jhumpa Lahiri's Interpreter of Maladies. I found myself spellbound and swept away into the sweltering world of contemporary Florida, where 'girls stuff' and femininity are not your ordinary pink stuff. Milk, Blood, Heat is a beautiful and dangerous place, where teenage girls dare to look at the face of death or evil. This ferocity in Dantiel’s characters searching for goodness in themselves mirrorsthe same power and audacity that makes Dantiel's writing so captivating. I would follow this magnificent voice anywhere.
“Milk Blood Heat grabbed me and wouldn’t let go. The prose blisters with a beauty so raw and intense it borders on horrifying. With widely differing characters, voices, and settings, each story makes its own unique contribution to the collection, yet each propels the reader onward in turn. Dantiel W. Moniz is a jaw-dropping new star on the literary stage.”
— Audrey Beatty, River Bend Bookshop, Glastonbury, CT
Description
SHORTLISTED FOR THE PEN/JEAN STEIN AND PEN/ROBERT W. BINGHAM AWARDSA NATIONAL BOOK FOUNDATION 5 UNDER 35 "Electric."--TIME"Enchanting."--Elle"Thrilling."--Glamour"Downright magical."--Boston Globe"Not only be read but felt. Like Danielle Evans and Lauren Groff, Moniz is unafraid to expose the darkened corners of the Sunshine State, and of female desire."--O, The Oprah MagazineA National Book Foundation "5 Under 35" Honoree and one of one of the most anticipated books of the year for Elle; Entertainment Weekly; BuzzFeed; O, The Oprah Magazine; Essence; and The Millions, among many others, Dantiel W. Moniz's Milk Blood Heat follows a cast of young girls, women, and men in Northern Florida who find themselves confronted by extraordinary moments of violent personal reckoning and the joys and pains of everyday life. This is an incendiary debut collection by an important new voice in literature."Stunning."--Tampa Bay Times "In Moniz's collection, the ordinary experience of being female is laced with a kind of enchantment... Entire stories seem bathed in a warm radiance."--New York Times "Outstanding."--Atlanta Journal Constitution"Prose that is both nuanced and so lush you can taste it."--Shondaland
About the Author
DANTIEL W. MONIZ is the recipient of the Alice Hoffman Prize for Fiction, the Cecelia Joyce Johnson Emerging Writer Award by the Key West Literary Seminars, and a Tin House Scholarship. Her fiction has appeared or is forthcoming in the Paris Review, Tin House, Ploughshares, the Yale Review, Joyland, McSweeney's Quarterly Concern, and elsewhere. Milk Blood Heat is her first book. Moniz is an Assistant Professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison where she teaches fiction. She lives in Northeast Florida.
“Milk Blood Heat grabbed me and wouldn’t let go. The prose blisters with a beauty so raw and intense it borders on horrifying. With widely differing characters, voices, and settings, each story makes its own unique contribution to the collection, yet each propels the reader onward in turn. Dantiel W. Moniz is a jaw-dropping new star on the literary stage.”