The Trojan War Museum

And Other Stories

The Trojan War Museum

and Other Stories

On sale: August 20, 2019

“One of the best and most surprising collections I've read in a long time. This is a wonder cabinet of stories, every story so singular and marvelous that I spent a long time after each, wanting to linger in the space it had created.” —Kelly Link

“This is a truly lovely, truly surprising book. Ayşe Papatya Bucak's stories are narratively precise, and they are also beautiful vignettes on human culture, deftly probing the fissures and pressure points of history. This collection absolutely glows with life.” —Lydia Kiesling

“What a beautiful, wildly imagined book. The Trojan War Museum gives us stories with branching paths, and they resemble fairy tales, historical accounts, news reports, and dreams. This is fiction of great originality and great delight.” —Joan Silber

“Ayşe Papatya Bucak shares with Jhumpa Lahiri the gift of fusing distinctive subject matter with an unusually restrained and elegant voice. This marvelous debut collection is truly rare in its range and depth, its deft mastery of history and myth, and its fearless story-telling.” —Andrea Barrett

“Bucak's stories are wide-ranging and capacious, formally playful, and moving. They speak on behalf of women who are subject to fate and the tides of history. They speak of overcoming, of falling prey, of overcoming again. They convey history's full force, but also the individual's willfulness, cunning, and compassion. These stories are also entirely contemporary and unique.” —Joshua Ferris

“Bucak’s remarkable, inventive, and humane debut marks her as a writer to watch.” —Publishers Weekly

Buy here: Indiebound here: W.W. Norton here: Books & Books or here: Amazon

I was born in Istanbul, Turkey—to an American mother and a Turkish father—but spent most of my childhood in Havertown, PA, just outside of Philadelphia. My BA is from Princeton University and my MFA from Arizona State University. You can find my stories and essays in a variety of journals, including Creative Nonfiction, Witness, Kenyon Review, Prairie Schooner, The Pinch, The Iowa Review, and Brevity.

In 2019, Norton will publish my short story collection The Trojan War Museum. Two of the included stories were chosen for the O. Henry and Pushcart Prizes. A lot of my work has been written at residencies, including Studios of Key West, Willapa Bay AIR, Hedgebrook, Brush Creek, the Betsy Hotel, and the Millay Colony for the Arts. I teach in the MFA program at Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton, Florida, and am a contributing editor for the journal Copper Nickel.