More Praise for

“[Fox’s] voice is strikingly mature. A writer’s job, she implies in the preface to this collection, is to take a ‘living interest in all living creatures,’ and these pieces attest to her brilliant success at that task.”

—The Atlantic

“Paula Fox’s essays and short stories all display a spare, marvelous luminosity. The author’s irreducible voice—it was the same with Virginia Woolf—can always be heard, whatever the genre.”

—Thomas Mallon, author of Watergate: A Novel

“Deeply contemplative and disarmingly courageous, Fox’s work astonishes readers with its lucidity.”

—Carol Haggas, Booklist

“A careful glimpse into Fox’s working processes, where the correspondences between varied modes provide a study of the relationship between art and life, of the way one experience can be pursued to divergent ends by different genres.”

—Stephen Burn, Bookforum

“Paula Fox is one of our greatest writers. Her prose is a model of ruthless, gorgeous efficiency, and her mind is so unnervingly alert to the messy contradictions that come with being human. These essays and stories will delight and inspire anyone who cares about literature, storytelling, and truth itself.”

—Tom Bissell, author of The Father of All Things

“Fox writes like she’s living and we just happened to show up and watch. . . . To read Fox’s words is to sit at her feet, to take part in what feels at times like oral tradition rather than a more scholarly mode of writing. As the stories and essays unfold in reverse chronological order, the reader becomes increasingly attuned to Fox’s particular manner.”

—Sarah Terez Rosenblum, Pop Matters

“The short stories are sparely written with great economy of language while conveying the great truths of life in love, death, loneliness, and happiness. . . . News from the World is a ‘must read’ for all of [Fox’s] loyal readers and is a great introduction to her gift for giving the world its ‘news’ in descriptive but economical language.”

—Sandra Clariday, Tennessee Library Association

“Paula Fox’s essays and short stories in this new compilation range wide and deep; that is, an essay will travel some ground, deposit ideas, make some assertions before coming to rest. Her gorgeous sentences—empty of excess—support complicated emotions, build multiple layers of story and take us to surprising intersections where associations take on meaning.”

—Rae Francoeur, Wicked Local