Hartwick's Tessa Yang Published Debut Fiction Anthology
On Thursday, October 13, Hartwick College Assistant Professor of Literature, Media, and Writing Tessa Yang celebrates the publication of her first collection of short stories. “The Runaway Restaurant: Stories” (7.13 Books) is a work of speculative fiction and contains stories from across a spectrum of themes, from dreamlike to dystopian.
Speculative fiction is a broad classification of writing, one that encompasses non-realist genres such as fantasy, science fiction, and horror. For example, in one story in “The Runaway Restaurant,” a young woman falls in love with a biohacked model, a woman with gadgets implanted in various parts of her body. In another, a mother searches for her missing daughter by taking on a hitchhiker in the hopes of finding a restaurant rumored to be a destination for runaways. And in another, after a pandemic wipes out modern civilization, a group of survivors must decide whether to merge with the Mother Earthlings, a clan determined to repopulate the Earth.
“You only get one first book, and like most authors, I’ve been dreaming of mine for a long time. The 13 stories represent six years of work, with lots of input and support from different people along the way. I’m inspired by other authors who live in that literary-speculative space, people like Lesley Nneka Arimah, Carmen Maria Machado, Helen Oyeyemi, and George Saunders.”
Tessa Yang
Assistant Professor of Literature, Media, and Writing
