Literary Fiction Highlights March Releases
March brings notable literary fiction including *Gunk* by Saba Sams, praised for sharp prose and nuanced relationship exploration. Susan Choi's *Flashlight* blends family drama with geopolitical intrigue, while *Medium Rare* by A. Natasha Joukovsky explores themes of ambition and identity. *Dust and Light* by Andrea Barrett examines the art of blending fact and fiction, perfect for meta-literature enthusiasts.
Saba Sams' debut novel *Gunk* follows her acclaimed 2022 short story collection, *Send Nudes*. That collection earned her a spot on Granta's "Best of Young British Novelists" list and won the BBC National Short Story Award for its story "Blue 4eva". Susan Choi is no stranger to literary accolades; her 2019 novel *Trust Exercise* won the National Book Award for Fiction, and her earlier book *American Woman* was a Pulitzer Prize finalist. *Flashlight* itself began as a short story that won the 2021 Sunday Times Audible Short Story Award before being expanded into the full-length novel. *Medium Rare* author A. Natasha Joukovsky's 2021 debut, *The Portrait of a Mirror*, was a satirical reinvention of the Narcissus myth centered on two self-involved, privileged couples. Her new novel continues the theme of modernizing Greek myths, this time transforming the story of Icarus into a tragicomedy about a D.C. lobbyist who gains fame by predicting a perfect March Madness bracket. Andrea Barrett, who won the National Book Award for her 1996 collection *Ship Fever* and later received a MacArthur Fellowship, is known for her fiction about scientists and naturalists. *Dust and Light* marks her first full-length work of nonfiction, a collection of essays that explores how writers blend historical facts into fiction, drawing from her own process and analyzing masters of the genre.
