Diane Williams

Diane Williams makes the very short story an instrument for exposing the strangeness of familiar behavior. Fine, Fine, Fine, Fine, Fine gathers forty compact stories whose ordinary encounters repeatedly shift into unease, comedy, or sudden revelation. Williams often withholds the explanatory bridge a reader expects, making sentence rhythm, abrupt turns, and precise observations carry much of the drama. McSweeney's published the collection in 2016 after also issuing her earlier Vicky Swanky Is a Beauty. The book belongs to a career devoted to compressed fiction, a form Williams uses to make domestic behavior and private thought feel unfamiliar without relying on long plots. She founded and edits the literary annual NOON. Additional books include The Collected Stories of Diane Williams, How High? That High, and I Hear You're Rich. In audio, Williams reads Fine, Fine, Fine, Fine, Fine herself, preserving the unusual pace and emphasis of prose whose effects often depend on where a sentence hesitates, swerves, or stops.