THE YEAR OF THE MONSTER
A 2023 Aspen Words Literary Prize Nominee, The Year of the Monster explores American culture as commodity and comorbidity. From black holes and animal extinctions to death row trauma porn and the redacted scripts of Hollywood abuses: these sixteen stories subvert traditional notions of justice, challenge vulnerable characters to survive in transgressive spaces. Mixing traditional prose with screenplay and script-hybrid, and certainly not without hope, The Year of the Monster encourages close examination of how American media and our complicity in its marriage of violence and culture perpetuate the human and environmental crises.
Fiction/ 978-1-956692-33-4/ September 27, 2022
A 2023 Aspen Words Literary Prize Nominee, The Year of the Monster explores American culture as commodity and comorbidity. From black holes and animal extinctions to death row trauma porn and the redacted scripts of Hollywood abuses: these sixteen stories subvert traditional notions of justice, challenge vulnerable characters to survive in transgressive spaces. Mixing traditional prose with screenplay and script-hybrid, and certainly not without hope, The Year of the Monster encourages close examination of how American media and our complicity in its marriage of violence and culture perpetuate the human and environmental crises.
Fiction/ 978-1-956692-33-4/ September 27, 2022
A 2023 Aspen Words Literary Prize Nominee, The Year of the Monster explores American culture as commodity and comorbidity. From black holes and animal extinctions to death row trauma porn and the redacted scripts of Hollywood abuses: these sixteen stories subvert traditional notions of justice, challenge vulnerable characters to survive in transgressive spaces. Mixing traditional prose with screenplay and script-hybrid, and certainly not without hope, The Year of the Monster encourages close examination of how American media and our complicity in its marriage of violence and culture perpetuate the human and environmental crises.
Fiction/ 978-1-956692-33-4/ September 27, 2022
Praise for THE YEAR OF THE MONSTER
“If you mix a cocktail of Octavia Butler, Mary Robison, and early Jayne Anne Phillips, you might get something approaching Tara Stillions Whitehead’s style. Yet her style is highly original and all her own: shape-shifting and subtle. Her language packs real power. The stories in The Year of the Monster deal with love and unlove, math and physics, deception, truth, and loss – – both personal and cultural. As they navigate life’s obstacles – both spiritual and societal -- her characters show resilience and stamina even when darkness looms. “God and Laundry” is one of the best short stories I’ve read in years. But read them all, every story – from cover to cover. The entire collection sparkles.”
—Larry Fondation, Martyrs and Holymen
“With a deftness and economy of language that calls to mind Etgar Keret, and a tender veil of grit and glamor reminiscent of the late Eve Babitz, Tara Stillions Whitehead’s The Year of the Monster is cinematic, and captivating. In sixteen stories, ranging from a jarring back-and-forth between movie execs, and an intimate, sultry portrayal of a community ripped apart and renewed by a tornado, Stillions Whitehead’s writing demonstrates an unending capacity for humanity, the kind that is necessary right now. It has to be said: The Year of the Monster is officially required reading.”
—Shannon Wolf, Green Card Girl
"The stories in The Year of the Monster are tender, truthful, fiery and finely wrought. Tara Stillions Whitehead has built a collection that leaves little doubt as to her range and mastery as a storyteller. This book could be studied at the level of language alone as her sentences are both elegant and exacting. The people who inhabit these stories have been through some things and there are no easy answers, but let this book serve as a short course in self-acceptance, grit, honesty, and survival. I'm in awe of Whitehead's intelligence and heart, fully on display in these pages. I know she has many more books ahead of her. I can't wait to read every one of them."
—Kathy Fish, author of Wild Life: Collected Works
“Not all black holes are the size of suns or weigh as much as a galaxy” writes Tara Stillions Whitehead in the title story of her potent, hypnotic hybrid collection The Year of The Monster, “Some are small, microscopic, atomic-sized holes.” Freckle-sized black hole on the inner thigh, deleted scene, trauma, alienation, addiction, grief–such invisible centers of gravity litter the landscapes of these stories, drawing their narrators toward transgressions and obliterations, to which they are simultaneously attracted and repelled. But they, and we, are repelled even more forcefully by the casual brutality of Hollywood plotlines, American dreams, the casualties of apocalypse and empire. In language of glitter and grit, paralyzing twilights, and prismatic undertows, Stillions Whitehead resists resolution, expanding the narrative universe, defying both genre and gravity. What survives a black hole? The answer isn’t an end but an action: just turn the page and surrender to the irresistible pull of the next utterly absorbing story.”
—Erin Rodoni, And if the Woods Carry You
“The Year of the Monster by Tara Stillions Whitehead is a must read! Stillions Whitehead writes with beautiful, razor-sharp language about the lingering darkness shadowed by the glitz of Hollywood. Whitehead takes us beyond the spotlights, the gossip, and the fandom to capture photographically and emotionally the people behind the scenes. In this vision of Los Angeles, we see the dreamers, the schemers, and the day workers who are fighting for their lives. The prose is fierce with each line an escalation, and an opportunity to see the world washed in sepia tones given a full-color blush on the big screen. Stillions Whitehead is a star, and this book shines brilliantly due to her ability to put the reader into odd, but meaningful moments of suspension as we're caught up in the lives of these unique characters. These stories will break you into pieces, and then soothe you back together. A Triumph.”
—Tommy Dean, Hollows
About TARA STILLIONS WHITEHEAD
A native Southern Californian, alumna of USC’s historic School of Cinematic Arts production track, and graduate of San Diego State University’s MFA fiction writing program, Tara Stillions Whitehead (she/her) is a producer and writer concerned with elevating marginalized voices and combatting institutional and narrative violence in the film and television industry. On the film side of her creative coin, she has logged thousands of hours on set, worked as a producer, sound recordist, and DGA assistant director, and now serves as Assistant Professor of Film, Video, and Digital Media Production at Messiah University in Mechanicsburg, PA. Her industry credits span the independent market and festival circuits as well as network television shows, such as The Big Bang Theory and Two and a Half Men. She recently joined the Central Pennsylvania Film Commission’s nonprofit project FACTS (film, arts, culture, and tech symposium) as a Trade-Off program mentor, certifying students as production assistants for professional film and television.
A dedicated writer in multiple genres, Tara believes that storytelling is the greatest act of living and that the most powerful stories teach us how to be better humans. Her hybrid collections Blood Histories (Galileo Press), The Year of the Monster (Unsolicited Press), and They More Than Burned (ELJ Editions) use formal experimentation to subvert and critique hegemonic “literary” conventions of narrative.
Tara’s books have been nominated for the Aspen Words Award, Maya Angelou Award, and Intro Journals Award, and have appeared on Small Press Distribution’s fiction bestsellers list. Her writing appeared in places like Fairy Tale Review, The Rupture, and American Literary Review and has been nominated for Best of the Net, Best Small Fictions, and the Pushcart Prize. Tara’s fiction was included in Wigleaf’s Top 50 in 2021 and 2022, and her essay, “The Mother Must Die and Other Lies Fairy Tales Told Me,” was selected as a notable essay in the Best American Essays 2022 anthology, edited by Alexander Chee.
Tara has received fellowship residencies from Sundress Academy of the Arts and Virginia Center for the Creative Arts and has served as a visiting writer at various colleges and universities, including Berry College, San Diego State University, Grossmont College, and SUNY Adirondack.
