When Mystical Creatures Attack! is a novel-in-stories (not a graphic novel, despite the cover illustration of a giant squid wrestling a unicorn) about an idealistic English teacher who has a nervous breakdown and corresponds with her former students from an insane asylum. It won the University of Iowa Press John Simmons Short Fiction Award and was named a New York Times Notable Book.
"This dark, rich, little novel in stories shows Founds as a talented moralist of nearly Russian ferocity."
Publisher’s Weekly Starred Review
"Punctuated with marvelous moments of humor and pathos, and no matter the narrative form [the stories] take, they uniformly reveal vividly realized characters with complex inner lives."
A surreal, dark, and very funny collection that has the emotional punch of a novel."
"Kathleen Found’s inventive debut collection has the cohesion and clout of a novel."
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel Review
"When Mystical Creatures Attack! dazzles with humor, imagination."
BLURBS!?! Blurbs!
These were not awkward to ask for all. Totally cool to e-mail every writer I have shaken hands with in the last ten years to say, "hey, could you use your spare time which you would otherwise use to create works of genius to instead read this book and then say the nicest possible thing you can say about me/the book without outright lying?"
Kathleen Founds is a luminous, bright, subversive and very funny writer. What I especially love about her work is the sense that her strange and wonderful talent is always working in the service of a deeply humane and hopeful vision of the world."
~ George Saunders*
"With the antic fearlessness of Mark Leyner and the compassion and inventiveness of Karen Russell, Kathleen Founds takes mad risks in tone and form and wins. These hilarious, heartbreaking stories build a new architecture** between the novel and the postmodern parable, revising our notions of what the short story is and might be."
~Wells Tower
"I first encountered these mystical animals when Kathleen Founds was in my writing class many years ago. I approached them with my pencil gripped firmly in hand, ready to analyze and criticize. The next things I knew, I was doodling in the margins of her story, actually drawing hearts and flowers all over it. I couldn't stop myself! I still don't know what happened; it was a very mystical and magical attack! All I can say is read this book and let it happen to you!" ~Mary Gaitskill
"Kathleen Founds is a comic genius,*** and few comic writers can deliver such wisdom and pathos along with the laughs. Her characters are unforgettable, in part because they are so original, and in part because they so poignantly resemble ourselves. Hers is a voice that will resonate long after you've stopped laughing."
~Mary Caponegro
*For the sake of total honesty, I should probably state that I studied under George Saunders at Syracuse, and he is one of the kindest humans I've met. Also, he may or may not view the world through a Buddhist lens in which all sentient beings have Buddha nature and thus emit luminous rays of heavenly light. But still, when I re-read this quote, it shores up my confidence, and makes me feel like the eight years I have spent (mostly happily) toiling in obscurity since my book came out were not 100% in vain, and thus paying pre-teen babysitters $15/hour to distract my daughters so I can draw bears in my room is not equivalent to tossing twenties in the BBQ.
**When my older brother read this quote, he said: "I remember the time you made a 'new architecture' for a graham cracker house, and it melted into itself, and you had to feed it to the birds.
***When my husband fails to laugh at my jokes (like my subversive crack about beef medallions v. beet medallions), I remind him that I am a comic genius.
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