Nettie Jones is the recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Individual Artist Award, a Yaddo Foundation fellowship, a Michigan Council for the Arts grant, a New York University Gallatin School of Individualized Study Student Choice Award, and a Carnegie Fund for Authors grant. Fish Tales, her debut novel, was first acquired by Toni Morrison, who was then an editor at Random House, and it was originally published in 1984. The New York Times named Jones a promising new novelist in 1985. Her second novel, Mischief Makers, was published in 1989. Her essays and short stories have appeared in numerous magazines and anthologies.

"A cult classic . . . [A] sharp, fast-paced look at the highs and lows of the human heart."
--Rhian Sasseen, The Atlantic

"A novel of desire, pleasure, drugs and sex . . . We'll all be better for it having been rediscovered."
--Emily Firetog, Literary Hub

"Fish Tales is a fast, fearless book, told in snatches, and so full of life it practically vibrates in your hands. The fashion, the rollicking orgies, the sex, the coke, the bubbles, the queens, the most head-spinning combination of tenderness and toxicity--it ought to have been the sensation of its time. Thank heavens for the revival of Fish Tales; thank heavens for the fierce vision of Nettie Jones."
--Justin Torres, author of Blackouts

"Fish Tales is candid, fast, and alive. Nettie Jones renders everything as its own particular organism--cities, relationships, and of course the body and its grotesque eroticism."
--Raven Leilani, author of Luster

"Fish Tales is wondrous and outrageous, real and incandescent and alive. A genuine treasure."
--Bryan Washington, author of Family Meal

"Nettie Jones writes about sex, yearning, money, and friendship like nobody's business. So much truth, hurt, and humor permeate this slim, enthralling novel, such that many of Jones's observations about the nature of power and desire feel written for today. Fish Tales will certainly dazzle you, and it might even scandalize you, but it never tells a lie."
--Angela Flournoy, author of The Turner House

Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Pub date: 2025-04-15

Length: 272 pages