About Hannah's debut
First Kicking, Then Not
Hannah Grieco’s captivating collection acts as a mirror: Who looks back? Who do you want to see?
A young woman transforms after an unspeakable loss. A recent divorcee discovers a new life. An aging mother fears losing everything she loves, while another abandons her children at Starbucks. First Kicking, Then Not introduces these women and many more, all of whom are hungry to know who they are outside the expectations of others.
By HANNAH GRIECO | Out soon from STANCHION
“I’ve been waiting for a book from Hannah Grieco for YEARS. Now that First Kicking, Then Not is here, it’s even more marvelous than I hoped. Her stories are perfectly crafted packages containing our shifting selfhoods. She gifts us discomfort and unease. She offers a wink and a laugh. She has an uncanny knack for picking the exact right moment to unsettle us and then resettle us in a position of greater understanding—greater wisdom. I love everything Hannah Grieco writes, and I think you will, too.” – Zach Powers, author of The Migraine Diaries
“If Amber Sparks had a twin who also wrote with a knife, it would be Hannah Grieco. These stories are sharp, twisted, and honest. Grieco writes with courage and clarity, but most timely, she tells stories with an unflinching and gracious heart.” — Melissa Scholes Young, author of Flood and The Hive
“Fierce and funny, wildly imaginative and deeply moving, Hannah Grieco’s first collection proves she is already a master of the short story. Like David Lynch, she has an eye for the spooky undercurrents of everyday life; like Mary Gordon, she’s clear-eyed in her depictions of domesticity and its woman-traps. But the wit, humanity, and the incisive intelligence here are all her own. First Kicking, Then Not is a wild and haunting ride.” — Rose Solari, author of The Last Girl and A Secret Woman, and co-founder of Alan Squire Publishing
“Hannah Grieco’s First Kicking, Then Not features hot flashes of horror and humor; the funniest, heart-breaking-est, most empathetic portrayal of a psychotic break I’ve ever read; and so much insight into the monstrosity that is modern motherhood that I considered running away for a day. This book will devour you in one sitting.” — Eman Quotah, author of Bride of the Sea and The Night Is Not for You
Launching in NYC and DC!
Reviews
“The artistry on display within Already Gone is next level—these are not just stories, they’re offramps and exit routes for readers and writers looking to break free from the ho-hum mundanity of daily living. Here is an oasis. Grieco has curated a vibrant, pulsing mosaic of human experience.” ~ Chris Gonzalez, author of I’m Not Hungry but I Could Eat
“Escapist lit at its best, the Already Gone anthology features forty stories infused with humanity and heart. Without pretense, the collection presents new definitions of what it means to be present, gone, and left behind. Grieco’s skillful and empathetic editing is evident in each of the selected works. Readers will find well-known names interspersed with new writers, stories of love and relationships, pain and loss, movement and stasis, community and individuality, with touches of humor. Through the integration of a range of stories, readers can feel and identify with the overarching theme. But there’s more here – a rawness, an emotionality that makes each story memorable on its own and together; a guidebook to running away from, and towards, life.” ~ Amy Cipolla Barnes, author of Mother Figures, Ambrotypes, and Child Craft
“There’s something deeply human about the urge to run away. We all, at one point or another, have longed for escape—be it from the mundane, the stress, or the fear that exists in our daily lives. Those feelings are captured succinctly, and sometimes beautifully, in the new release of short stories from Alan Squire Publishing.” ~ Sarah Marloff, arts editor at Washington City Paper
“As a reader, I was thrilled with this hybrid collection of fiction and memoir. As Grieco notes in her introduction, “Maybe we all want to run away…and if we can’t release the burden in real life, perhaps the page is where we turn.” Rarely is there a story collection that speaks to both the writer and the child in me as Already Gone did.
Deesha Philyaw’s story, “Mother’s Day,” about a mother leaving as her kids sleep, just about broke my heart. The wondrous flash story “That Kind of Love,” by Melissa Llanes Brownlee, imagines a girl at the sea’s edge, ready to run from her tumultuous family life, the sea and its gods calling to her in images that glint and roil.
In Zach Powers’ “Surface Treatments,” I was hoping the children would run from their alcoholic parents. In language that’s as horrifying as it is plaintive in its exacting detail, the act of painting a home becomes the very act that destroys it. And in Jen Soong’s evocative “Feeding Time,” the narrator packs her mother’s suitcase with food but warns against hungry ghosts. It’s a haunting story of never entirely leaving the past behind.
There are many ways we run away from those we love, care for, or need to escape, and these stories explore them all.
I always grapple with how to end my own stories and even how to order them in a collection. Grieco chose a poetic meditation on boys leaving and returning to conclude Already Gone, “Hummingbirds in the Forest of Needle and Blood,” by Ahimsa Timoteo Bodhrán. One must read the entire dreamy fable, with each sentence skillfully starting with the command “Say.” The story ends on this call: “Say this is our story. Ours.”
Perfect.
Already Gone’s stories are our stories, and its culmination gives warning and hope to all those who wish to run away — or to write.” ~ Caroline Bock, Washington Independent Review of Books