The Archivists
(TriQuarterly, 2023)
Winner of the Grace Paley Prize
Long-listed for the Joyce Carol Oates Prize
Long-listed for the Massachusetts Book Award
A Boston Authors Club Notable Book
The Archivists are everyday people, but when private losses or the shocks of history set their worlds reeling, they find connection and liberation in surprising ways. This vibrant collection brings transcendence, wry humor, and a touch of the uncanny to life’s absurdities and catastrophes—whether economic recession, fallout after the 2016 presidential election, gentrification, pandemic lockdown, illness, or the intergenerational impacts of the Holocaust and Communist occupation of Eastern Europe. From a thirteen-year-old girl in 1950s Toronto infiltrating the ranks of Bell Canada to a solitary woman pursued on a walk in New Mexico, these deeply moving stories ingeniously consider issues of identity, history, and memory, and our shared search for meaning in an off-kilter world.