Invitation to a Bonfire (23 page)

And I am determined to be happy.

 

Acknowledgments

I'm endlessly grateful to Emma Patterson for her insight, friendship, and forbearance, all of which serve to make me a better and (usually) saner writer. Thanks also to Lea Beresford for being an incredible champion for this book, and for helping me realize its best possibilities. I think we three make a pretty good team.

Thank you to Sara Kitchen, Lauren Hill, and everyone at Bloomsbury USA and UK. I'm especially grateful to my UK editor Alison Hennessey for her enthusiasm and care in bringing this novel to a readership across the pond. To my phenomenal copy editor Janet McDonald: I appreciate you. To Katya Mezhibovskaya: Thank you for designing a cover that is truly better than anything I imagined.

Love and gratitude to Branden Boyer-White (first reader, second reader, hero of my heart), Angie Dell, Rachel Andoga, Lyndsey Reese, Sam Martone, Peter Turchi, Tara Ison, T. M. McNally, and Melissa Pritchard for years of friendship and inspiration. To Rene
é
Bibby, Lilian Vercauteren, and everyone who is a part of Write Wednesday, for sometimes letting me pick the restaurant. To Lauren Cerand for excellent advice and generosity with her time. To Katie Adams for offering valuable feedback on an early version of this manuscript, as well as her enthusiasm writ large. To Esm
é
Weijun Wang, for offering joy, sharing John Wick, and being brilliant. To Edan Lepucki and Alissa Nutting for support when it was most needed. To Mairead Case, for being. To Lynn Steger Strong, Katie Coyle, Rachel Fershleiser, Jaime Green, Erika Swyler, and other friends who make my daily life better, even if it's usually through a crackling digital void.

Heartfelt thanks to the Willapa Bay Artist Residency Program, the Jentel Arts Foundation, and the Launch Pad Astronomy Workshop for offering me space and support while I worked on this book. (To my Launch Pad friends: this may not have been quite what you had in mind, but studying science fiction writers turns out to have been as valuable for me as studying science.) Thanks also to my mother-in-law, Karen Clark, for taking us on a vacation to Mexico where I drafted a huge swath of pages and got a nice suntan, too.

Thank you to my family, always.

Thank you to Dave, especially. I love you.

 

A Note on the Author

Adrienne Celt's debut novel,
The Daughters
, won the PEN Southwest Book Award for Fiction and was an NPR Best Book of the Year and an NYPL Favorite Book of the Year. Her story “Temples” was included in
The O. Henry Prize Stories 2016
after originally appearing in
Epoch
. Celt's short fiction appears or is forthcoming in
Zyzzyva
,
Ecotone
, the
Kenyon Review
,
Prairie Schooner
,
Esquire
,
Electric Literature
, and
Carve Magazine
, among others; her nonfiction has appeared in the
Rumpus
,
Tin House
's “Open Bar,”
Lit Hub
, the
Toast
,
Catapult
, the
Millions
, and elsewhere. Adrienne has an MFA in fiction from Arizona State University, draws weekly web comics at loveamongthelampreys.com, and lives in Tucson, Arizona.

 

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First published in the United States 2018

Copyright © Adrienne Celt, 2018

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ISBN: HB: 978-1-63557-152-3; eBook: 978-1-63557-151-6

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