"From the first page you know you're in the hands of an exceptional writer... I adored this book." --Zadie Smith

"Sexy and radical and intimate." --Miranda July

Named a Best Book of 2016 by VICE, Elle, Nylon, Publishers Weekly and NPR

Named one of the most anticipated books of the fall by the Huffington Post, New York, The Boston Globe, Lit Hub, and The Millions

Now available in Ecco's Art of the Story series: a never-before-published collection of stories from a brilliant yet little known African American artist and filmmaker--a contemporary of revered writers including Toni Cade Bambara, Laurie Colwin, Ann Beattie, Amy Hempel, and Grace Paley--whose prescient work has recently resurfaced to wide acclaim.

Humorous, poignant, perceptive, and full of grace, Kathleen Collins's stories masterfully blend the quotidian and the profound in a personal, intimate way, exploring deep, far-reaching issues--race, gender, family, and sexuality--that shape the ordinary moments in our lives.

In "The Uncle," a young girl who idolizes her handsome uncle and his beautiful wife makes a haunting discovery about their lives. In "Only Once," a woman reminisces about her charming daredevil of a lover and his ultimate--and final--act of foolishness. Collins's work seamlessly integrates the African-American experience in her characters' lives, creating rich, devastatingly familiar, full-bodied men, women, and children who transcend the symbolic, penetrating both the reader's head and heart.

Both contemporary and timeless, Whatever Happened to Interracial Love? is a major addition to the literary canon, and is sure to earn Kathleen Collins the widespread recognition she is long overdue.

BIO

Kathleen Collins, who died in 1988 at age forty-six, was an African-American playwright, writer, filmmaker, director, and educator from Jersey City. She was the first black woman to produce a feature length film.

REVIEWS

"The writing is practically visceral; straightforward and crisp, leaving you wanting more and thinking about what you just read." --Book Riot

"[Collins'] stories are intense meditations on love, heartbreak, youthful ennui, gender, and race...The stories in this collection are often conversational and candid, as though the reader has been invited to have a chat with the narrator...There are shades in the intimacy and urgency of Collins' writing of Lorraine Hansberry and Zora Neale Hurston...Sharp and lovely...Collins' work will certainly be canonized now, but what a shame that didn't happen earlier." --Slate

"A multidimensional revelation... Delves deep into modern history and personal experience to yield, in calm yet prismatic phrases, urgent and deeply affecting insights into her times, which echo disturbingly today... Collins's style is fine, graceful, and reserved, but pierced with the harsh simplicity of lurking menace." --New Yorker

Ecco Press  /  December 06, 2016

0.5" H x 7.9" L x 5.4" W (0.3 lbs) 192 pages