Kate Zambreno is the author most recently of Drifts; To Write As if Already Dead, a study of Hervé Guibert; The Light Room; and a collaborative study on tone in literature with Sofia Samatar. They live in Brooklyn with their two children and their partner, John Vincler. A 2021 Guggenheim Fellow in Nonfiction, they are a PhD candidate in performance studies at NYU.

Praise for Animal Stories:

"Zambreno's lucid writing and relentless inquisitiveness shine."--Publishers Weekly

"Lyrical meditations on the creative imagination and the animal in all of us...[Animal Stories] is a tour of the zoo cages of the writer's own mind, opened for all of us to gaze on and gasp."--Kirkus Reviews

"I loved the precision of Kate Zambreno's Animal Stories--a literal attention so heightened that it becomes distinct and peculiar...Few human animals have Zambreno's baleful honesty, insight, or relish for comedy, when they look at themselves."--Daisy Hildyard, author of Emergency

"A searching, charmingly discursive meditation...Zambreno's reveries flit between criticism, history, and memoir--an approach well-suited to the diffuse melancholy of the zoo."--Dan Piepenbring, Harper's

"A personal, historical, and philosophical reflection on the gap between human and animal perceptions of each other...[Animal Stories] considers the tragicomic implications of our own animal being""--Brian Dillon, 4Columns

"A view on the world using a deep field of focus that renders details near and far with equal clarity. Ostensibly unrelated figures are thus united within the writer's rich conceptual frame...Blazingly erudite...Animal Stories reflects [Zambreno's] vital unboundedness."--The Brooklyn Rail

"Zambreno is one of our most inventive and formally daring writers...[Animal Stories] sees them at the height of their powers."--The Millions

"The genre-bending reports in Animal Stories form a fascinating, kaleidoscopic meditation on the act of observing other animals and how we view ourselves among them. . . . It's an outstanding marriage of personal narrative and literary criticism."--Keith Rutowski, Boswell Book Company (Milwaukee, WI)

"Zambreno, a brilliant feminist author whose insights have recontextualized generations of writings by women, visits the monkey house at a Parisian zoo. This window into simian behavior offers Zambreno some astonishing new insights into the whole of human behavior--including how we consider ourselves in relation to other animals."--The Seattle Times

Praise for Kate Zambreno:

"Kate Zambreno has invented a new form. It is a kind of absolute present, real life captured in closeup."--Annie Ernaux, winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature

Publisher: Transit Books

Pub date: 2025-09-16

Length: 120 pages