Thanks for This Riot
Stories
Janelle Bassett (Author)
9781496240330
Paperback / softback, published 1 September 2024
186 pages
21.6 x 14 x 1.8 cm, 0.252 kg
"An acerbic examination of family and femininity."-Kirkus Reviews
"Thanks for This Riot shows us what happens when we reach for understanding instead of judgment. This is a collection I will be thinking about for a long time."-Julia Romero, October Hill Magazine
"Thanks for This Riot is a captivating book from beginning to end. It is clear that Bassett is a talented writer, for each story contains unique characters and emotionally resonant themes. I highly recommend you check out this book, especially if you enjoy the art of short fiction."-Dominique Weldon, Erato Magazine
"Bassett never writes a judgmental line-if you are looking for irony or eye rolls, they are not here. Her stories play in shadows without being dark or blindly optimistic. Accept that people and their flaws make a flawed world. There's nothing to be gained by standing in the spotlight; make whimsey in the shade-it's way more fun."-Jeannine Burgdorf, Masters Review
“Janelle Bassett’s voice is one I can’t get enough of. The stories in Thanks for This Riot are fresh and unique and wickedly off-kilter but also burn with a wry, age-old, ironic wisdom. This collection is bitingly funny but sincerely so, with little lies and harmless untruths taking on an edge and inflicting irresistible damage.”-Timothy Schaffert, author of The Perfume Thief and The Titanic Survivors Book Club
“Janelle Bassett is a phenomenal writer. These stories are smart, irreverent, hilarious, and so wonderfully intimate. It is rare to find a writer who can balance humor with such earnest human emotion, and Bassett does it on every page. This collection is gold.”-Alison Espach, author of Notes on Your Sudden Disappearance and The Wedding People
“Janelle Bassett’s writing is hilarious, intense, and alive. Every story in this collection is off-kilter in the best possible way. The characters are all trying to make sense of themselves in a world that doesn’t fit quite right. Reading this felt like being tickled forcefully, laughing even as it got uncomfortable.”-Katya Apekina, author of Mother Doll and The Deeper the Water the Uglier the Fish
Winner of the Raz/Shumaker Prairie Schooner Book Prize in Fiction
Longlisted for the 2025 PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize for Debut Short Story Collection
Thanks for This Riot explores the limits of kindness, the weight of being needed, and the fear of being misunderstood. A group counselor is taunted by a truth-divining piano bench, a voice actor shouts her abortion at the state capitol, a tired caregiver tangles with a pair of stand-up comics, a small-town newspaper office shelters an otherworldly tattletale, a backwoods acupuncturist leans on her least-exciting offspring, a girl in a strapless bra takes a vengeful go-kart ride, and a woman gets surgery to lower her expectations (she thinks it went “okay”). Grouped by types of riot-external riots, internal riots, and laugh riots-Thanks for This Riot is a poignant and mordantly funny collection with a distinctly feminist viewpoint.
External Riots: Threats and Violence
More Restrictive Than Supportive
The Crowded Private Cottage
All I Need Are These Four Walls and Some Positive Feedback
No Space Is Too Small When Your Head Is Detachable
Babies Don’t Keep
Internal Riots: Secrets and Lies
Prove It
These New Francescas
Perceptor Weekly
Bulk Trash Is for Lovers
Safe Distances
Laugh Riots: Growing and Trying
Enviable Levels
Full Stop
The Right Light
Wilderness Mound
Thanks for This Riot
Acknowledgments
Source Acknowledgments
