Fiction. Winner of the 5th Starcherone Prize for Innovative Fiction. At turns funny, heartfelt, and wise, THE CREEPY GIRL gives us 15 stories, remarkable in their variety, about families and childhood, small towns and prophets, boys and girls, life and death. In every story, the exuberant, playful language of Janet Mitchell's debut continually surprises.
Author City: LOS ANGELES, CA USA
In May 2005, Janet Mitchell received her Master of Fine Arts in Fiction from Columbia University, where she was the Bingham Scholarship recipient in her second year. Her short stories have appeared in The Quarterly, Pomona Valley Review, and have been optioned by Lifetime Television as well as by independent producers. Janet earned her Master of Fine Arts in Film Production from the University of Southern California, where she won the coveted John Huston Award for Best Director and a prestigious Paramount Pictures Fellowship. Her award-winning short film, "How Does Anyone Get Old?", starring Mark Ruffalo and Mina Badie, was featured on IFC's "Inside the Indies" and on NBC's "Starwatch." Her educational video, "Behind Closed Doors" won a Cine Golden Eagle and is currently being used in over 250 schools nationwide. THE CREEPY GIRL was selected by Final Judge Lance Olsen as winner of the 5th Starcherone Prize for Innovative Fiction in a blind-judged, open competition that drew 190 entries.
Reviews and Other Links
Pamela Mann in Gently Read Literature
I. T. Hill in Bookslut
author site
Publishers Weekly
"Janet Mitchell writes sudden, severe, disturbing stories that capture the reader in a kind of choke hold, and THE CREEPY GIRL, her debut collection, is a work of outrageous, much-needed literary ambition. Mitchell is hell-bent on extracting every last drop of sadness and pain from her sentences."
—Ben Marcus, author of Notable American Women, a novel
"These energizing, sparklingly imaginative, at time visionary stories—one about a woman who wants her mother stuffed and made pretty when she dies; others about mysterious metalogical creatures—form a necklace of deceptively childlike voices moving through an avant-gothic cosmos. But they are as much, if not more, about the beauties of surprising, rhythmic prose, as well, the syllabic stuff you can taste on the tongue."
—Lance Olsen, Final Judge, 5th Starcherone Fiction Prize
"These stories are a lot like dreams: wonderfully strange and disquieting, very funny when you least expect it, and chock-full of complexities to mine. They are also beautifully rendered, highly entertaining, and original. THE CREEPY GIRL and other stories is an exciting debut collection, and Janet Mitchell is a laudable writer."
—Binnie Kirschenbaum, author of An Almost Perfect Moment