ABOUT THIS BOOK

Muñoz’s breakthrough collection, reissued with a new foreword by author Helena María Viramontes

Manuel Muñoz’s first collection of stories goes beyond the traditional family myths of Mexican American literature and the image of California’s Central Valley as a lush world of rural tranquility, instead exploring the constant struggle of characters against their physical and personal surroundings. A teenage boy learns the consequences of succumbing to the lure of a town outsider; a young farm worker attempts to hide his supervision of a group of children from the town police; a father must expose his own secrets after his son is found murdered in a highway motel. Experiencing conflicts of family and sexuality and the pain of loss and memory, the characters in Zigzagger seek to reconcile themselves with the rural towns of their upbringing—places that, by nature, are bordered by loneliness.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY

MANUEL MUÑOZ is celebrated as one of the foremost literary chroniclers of California’s Central Valley. Northwestern University Press published his debut story collection, Zigzagger, in 2003, and are delighted to announce that reprints of his second story collection and his novel will be joining the acclaimed TriQuarterly imprint. Each reissue includes a foreword that celebrates the enduring, empathic power of Muñoz’s fiction.

Muñoz has been recognized with a Whiting Award, three O. Henry Awards, the Joyce Carol Oates Prize, two selections in Best American Short Stories and, most recently, a 2023 MacArthur Fellowship. His frequently anthologized work has appeared in The New York Times, Virginia Quarterly Review, American Short Fiction, Electric Literature, ZYZZYVA, andFreeman’s. A native of Dinuba, California, he lives in Tucson.

REVIEWS

"Zigzagger is a book to read if you want to see another California, one that might be unfamiliar but is home to millions. It heralds the arrival of a gifted and sensitive writer." —Los Angeles Times
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TABLE OF CONTENTS

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