A graduate of the University of Nevada Reno and the Ohio State University, Claire has received fellowships from the Writers’ Conferences at Sewanee and Bread Loaf. Her stories and essays have appeared in Granta, One Story, The Paris Review, Ploughshares, Glimmer Train, Best of the West 2011, Best of the Southwest 2013, and elsewhere. In 2012, the National Book Foundation named Claire one of the 5 Best Writers Under 35. Battleborn was named a Best Book of 2012 by the San Francisco Chronicle, Boston Globe, Time Out New York, and Flavorwire, and a Best Short Story Collection by NPR.org. Arcing from the sweeping and sublime to the minute and personal, from Gold Rush to ghost town to desert to brothel, the collection echoes not only in its title but also in its fierce, undefeated spirit the motto of her home state.Ĭlaire Vaye Watkinsis the author of Battleborn, winner of the Story Prize, the Rosenthal Family Foundation Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and a Silver Pen Award from the Nevada Writers Hall of Fame. Most bravely of all, Watkins takes on – and reinvents – her own troubled legacy in a story that emerges from the mayhem and destruction of Helter Skelter. Decades after she led her best friend into a degrading encounter in a Vegas hotel room, a woman feels the aftershock.

A prospecting hermit discovers the limits of his rugged individualism when he tries to rescue an abused teenager. The arrival of a foreigner transforms the exchange of eroticism and emotion at a prostitution ranch. Her characters orbit around the region's vast spaces, winning redemption despite - and often because of - the hardship and violence they endure. In each of these ten unforgettable stories, Claire Vaye Watkins writes her way fearlessly into the mythology of the American West, utterly reimagining it. Like the work of Cormac McCarthy, Denis Johnson, Richard Ford, and Annie Proulx, Battleborn represents a near-perfect confluence of sensibility and setting, and the introduction of an exceptionally powerful and original literary voice.

Winner of New York Public Library Young Lions Fiction AwardĪ Boston Globe, San Francisco Chronicle, and Time Out New York Best Book of the year, and more. Named one of the National Book Foundation's '5 Under 35' fiction writers of 2012 Recipient of the American Academy of Arts and Letters 2013 Rosenthal Family Foundation Award The extraordinary debut collection from the Guggenheim Award-winning author of the forthcoming Gold Fame Citrus

Battleborn short stories