ANDREW FOSTER ALTSCHUL is a Jones Lecturer and former Wallace Stegner Fellow at Stanford University. His work has appeared in Fence, Swink, StoryQuarterly, One Story and other journals, as well as the anthologies Best New American Voices 2006 and The O. Henry Prize Stories 2007. He lives in San Francisco.
In my teens, someone turned me on to a dark, strange set of sci-fi/fantasy books called The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, the Unbeliever by Stephen R. Donaldson. I still think about them sometimes. They were some of my favorite books when I was a child.
DEBUT FICTION This spectacular, sprawling debut novel tells the story of Calliope Bird Morath, daughter of legendary punk-rock star Brandt Morath—whose horrific suicide devastated the world—and his notorious wife, Penelope. The novel is narrated by both Calliope and her obsessive biographer, who follows her fr…