Ricky - (Kentucky Literature) by Whitney Collins (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

From Whitney Collins, the award-winning author of Big Bad, come twenty-three new dark and derelict (and hilarious) tales about--you guessed it--love.

With Ricky, Collins applies her sharp eye, black humor, and generous heart to love stories (and the stories we tell ourselves about love). Among the wacky, tacky, lovesick, and lovelorn characters are: Ilona, the misanthropic mother and unhappy fiancé who is increasingly transfixed by a rash of local shark attacks; Imogen, the sperm bank client who cultivates the love she madly desires inside herself; and Aurora Flood, the coma survivor on a mission to plant a sacred seed from the Olive Garden. Blending elements of southern gothic, speculative fiction, and horror, Ricky & Other Love Stories is political and personal, bitter and sweet: ultimately, a lot like love.

Review Quotes

Featured in Book of the Month's Volume 0

"Tales that tackle 'love and the stories we tell ourselves about it' through humor, horror and elements of Southern Gothic."

--Jacelyn Sturgill, Chevy Chaser

"Rippling with lusty eccentrics and village witches and any number of go-for-broke schemers, Ricky & Other Love Stories is the kind of wickedly funny book that, whenever you throw your head back in laughter, drops a fierce capsule of truth into the pink of your throat."

--Karen Tucker, author of Bewilderness

"If you prefer your love stories shaken, stirred, or dashed upon the rocks, Ricky & Other Love Stories is for you. With her trademark brevity, insight, and wit, Whitney Collins beautifully blurs the line between love and obsession. These stories yank aside the curtain, exposing the raw, and often rusty, inner workings of human affection."

--Jen Fawkes, author of Tales the Devil Told Me

"In her latest collection, Whitney Collins doubles down on her reputation as a fiercely imaginative and devastatingly astute writer. The characters within possess humor, passion, and (sometimes) crazy outlooks on life but are capable of striking moments of clarity. Reading Ricky & Other Love Stories, I couldn't help but be reminded of such witty and singular writers as Jill McCorkle and Bobbie Ann Mason."

--Hannah Pittard, author of We Are Too Many

"Ricky & Other Love Stories is brilliant, tender, and true. In these stories, Whitney Collins achieves an ecstatic portrait of the human heart."

--Dana Vachon, coauthor with Jim Carrey of Memoirs and Misinformation

"In Ricky & Other Love Stories, Whitney Collins reveals and revels in the lives of the odd, the grotesque, the lonely, and unloved. Combining elements of horror, magic realism, and Southern Gothic, Collins never ceases to amuse or amaze. She has a voice so funny, so unsparing--yet so humane and tender--that it's hard to think of any other writer doing anything quite like her."

--Andrew Bertaina, author of One Person Away From You

Past Praise for Big Bad:

"Beautifully written, wildly imaginative stories."

--Kirkus Reviews

"Not a word is wasted in Big Bad, an unusual and masterful collection of short stories."

--Foreword Reviews

"Collins exhibits a contagious appreciation for the world's strange horrors, big and small."

--Publishers Weekly

"A deliciously dark world in which anything is possible and the most horrifying is probable."

--Southern Review of Books

About the Author

Whitney Collins is the author of BIG BAD, which won the 2019 Mary McCarthy Prize, a 2022 Gold IPPY, and a 2021 Bronze INDIES. Whitney earned a Distinguished Story by The Best American Short Stories 2022. She also won a 2020 Pushcart Prize, a 2020 Pushcart Special Mention, the 2020 American Short(er) Fiction Prize, and the 2021 ProForma Contest. Her stories have appeared in American Short Fiction, AGNI, The Idaho Review, Gulf Coast, The Pinch, Grist, The Best Small Fictions 2022, Tiny Nightmares: Very Short Tales of Horror (Catapult), and Fractured Literary Anthology 3, among others. She received her MFA from the Naslund-Mann Graduate School of Writing and lives in Kentucky with her sons.