Truman Capote Fellow. Her work has appeared in The Georgia Review, Narrative Magazine, The Gettysburg Review, Brevity, Alaska Quarterly Review, and Best American Nonrequired Reading, among others. She was a recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Prose Fellowship in 2020. She currently lives in Cincinnati, where she is pursuing a PhD in Fiction writing.
Branum's new novel is Defenestrate.
At Electric Lit she tagged seven stories "about myths and beliefs inherited from each generation," including:
A Thousand Acres by Jane SmileyRead about the other entries on the list.
In this modern retelling of Shakespeare’s King Lear, set on a vast Iowa farm, the family “curse” takes the form of duty, responsibility, and the burden of literal inheritance as the family patriarch wields his power by determining which of his three daughters will be granted a portion of his thousand-acre farm upon hisdeath. This brilliantly told family drama investigates the complicated web of loyalties that arise within a network of family relationships, as well as how the inherited curse of silence in the face of abuse can shape a legacy of guilt and estrangement.
A Thousand Acres is among Lois Leveen's five novels that riff on—and rip off—Shakespeare, Stacey Swann's seven novels about family members making each other miserable, Robert McCrum's ten top Shakespearean books, Rachel Mans McKenny's eleven books about midwesterners who aren’t trying to be nice, Hannah Beckerman's top ten toxic families in fiction, Brian Boone's five books that offer a brand new take on pre-existing works, Edward Docx's top ten Shakespearean stories in modern fiction, Emma Donoghue's six best books, Anne Tyler's six favorite books, Sally O'Reilly ten top novels inspired by Shakespeare, Alexia Nader's nine favorite books about unhappy families, and John Mullan's top ten twice-told tales.
--Marshal Zeringue
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