MFA graduate Ali Simpson’s short story, “The Monster,” which first appeared in TSR The Southampton Review, has been posted on Electric Literature’s weekly fiction magazine, Recommended Reading (Vol. 16, No. 4). Simpson’s story was recommended to the site by Southampton Review fiction editor and Stony Brook Southampton visiting professor Susan Merrell, who wrote in an editor’s note on the site that the “dark, and twisted, and unforgettable” story “is as much an allegory about a nervous breakdown as it is a metaphorical description of the transition to adulthood, and of the writing process itself.”
Merrell also noted that “The Monster” was the first piece by Simpson that made it clear she had “transcended student status — that she’d crossed over to a full understanding of what a story has to have to exist on both the fantastic and the human level.”
In addition to The Southampton Review, Simpson’s work has been published or is forthcoming in The First Line and Carrier Pigeon. Simpson is a publishing assistant and is also working on a collection of speculative fiction, When Meat Is Given a Second Chance.
Electric Literature is an independent publisher working to ensure that literature remains a vibrant presence in popular culture. Electric Literature’s weekly fiction magazine, Recommended Reading, invites established authors, indie presses and literary magazines to recommended great fiction.
