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Table of Contents
About The Book
Unpicking the stitches of gender and genre, the stories in this searing, funny, haunting debut explore how our ideas of womanhood shape us, and what they cost us.
Winner of the 2023 NSW Premier’s Literary Award, Christina Stead Prize for Fiction
Shortlisted for the NSW Premier’s Literary Award, UTS Glenda Adams Award for New Writing
SMH Best Young Australian Novelist of 2023
Highly commended, 2024 Barbara Jefferis Award
‘My God darling—the women I know.’
A young woman tries to cheat her algorithm, creating a wholesome online persona while her ‘real’ life dissipates. A grandmother speaks to her granddaughter through the fog of generations. Two lovers divide over alternative meat options. A factory worker fits eyes in companion dolls until she is called on to install her own.
The women I know are sharp, absurd, sly, wrong, wry, repressed, hungry, horny, bold, envious, dominating, uncertain, overdetermined, underpaid, bored, smart, crystalizing, themselves.
A burning talent with growing international recognition, Katerina Gibson’s work has appeared in Granta, Kill Your Darlings, Overland and elsewhere. She is the Pacific regional winner of the 2021 Commonwealth Short Story Prize and recipient of the Felix Meyer Scholarship.
‘Smart, gleeful, savage, funny and genuinely brilliant. I kept wanting to cry out with joy! Katerina Gibson is a superstar.’ Miles Allinson, author of In Moonland and Fever of Animals
‘[These stories] demonstrate an intellectual and imaginative power in their fearless probing into corners of the human world we didn’t even think existed until now. ... an author prepared to question and disrupt everything. This is an assured collection, audacious, dark, comic, and full of surprises – it demands to be reread, several times.’ Debra Adelaide, ABR
'Women I Know is a rich, contemporary blend of inventive and entertaining writing. Dark and funny, Katerina Gibson’s stories are sparkling with ideas – it’s thrilling that the future of Australian fiction is held in such talented hands.' Ben Walter, author of What Fear Was
'Come for the bold conceits, stay for the savage disaffection. These mind-bending stories startle, surprise, beguile and devastate. Gibson’s talent, in striking out from the shores of realism, is to bring us closer to the truths of contemporary life.' Jo Lennan, author of In the Time of Foxes
‘[T]he pieces in Gibson’s fiction debut create an elegant and subtle whole, with delicate prose that moves the reader as expertly as it disturbs them.’ Georgia Brough, Books+Publishing
‘Katerina Gibson is a serious writer whose talent is going to envelop the whole world--you heard it here first. Reading this book made me genuinely excited and genuinely appalled by the depth of Gibson's promise.' Ellena Savage, author of Blueberries
Winner of the 2023 NSW Premier’s Literary Award, Christina Stead Prize for Fiction
Shortlisted for the NSW Premier’s Literary Award, UTS Glenda Adams Award for New Writing
SMH Best Young Australian Novelist of 2023
Highly commended, 2024 Barbara Jefferis Award
‘My God darling—the women I know.’
A young woman tries to cheat her algorithm, creating a wholesome online persona while her ‘real’ life dissipates. A grandmother speaks to her granddaughter through the fog of generations. Two lovers divide over alternative meat options. A factory worker fits eyes in companion dolls until she is called on to install her own.
The women I know are sharp, absurd, sly, wrong, wry, repressed, hungry, horny, bold, envious, dominating, uncertain, overdetermined, underpaid, bored, smart, crystalizing, themselves.
A burning talent with growing international recognition, Katerina Gibson’s work has appeared in Granta, Kill Your Darlings, Overland and elsewhere. She is the Pacific regional winner of the 2021 Commonwealth Short Story Prize and recipient of the Felix Meyer Scholarship.
‘Smart, gleeful, savage, funny and genuinely brilliant. I kept wanting to cry out with joy! Katerina Gibson is a superstar.’ Miles Allinson, author of In Moonland and Fever of Animals
‘[These stories] demonstrate an intellectual and imaginative power in their fearless probing into corners of the human world we didn’t even think existed until now. ... an author prepared to question and disrupt everything. This is an assured collection, audacious, dark, comic, and full of surprises – it demands to be reread, several times.’ Debra Adelaide, ABR
'Women I Know is a rich, contemporary blend of inventive and entertaining writing. Dark and funny, Katerina Gibson’s stories are sparkling with ideas – it’s thrilling that the future of Australian fiction is held in such talented hands.' Ben Walter, author of What Fear Was
'Come for the bold conceits, stay for the savage disaffection. These mind-bending stories startle, surprise, beguile and devastate. Gibson’s talent, in striking out from the shores of realism, is to bring us closer to the truths of contemporary life.' Jo Lennan, author of In the Time of Foxes
‘[T]he pieces in Gibson’s fiction debut create an elegant and subtle whole, with delicate prose that moves the reader as expertly as it disturbs them.’ Georgia Brough, Books+Publishing
‘Katerina Gibson is a serious writer whose talent is going to envelop the whole world--you heard it here first. Reading this book made me genuinely excited and genuinely appalled by the depth of Gibson's promise.' Ellena Savage, author of Blueberries
About The Author
Supplied by the author
Katerina Gibson was born in 1994. She is a writer and a bookseller living in Naarm. Her stories have appeared in Granta, Overland, The Lifted Brow, Island Online, Going Down Swinging, the Meanjin blog andKill Your Darlings'New Australian Fiction 2020 anthology. Her short story 'Fertile Soil' was the Pacific regional winner of the 2021 Commonwealth Short Story Prize. Katerina is a 2021 Felix Meyer Scholar and a Sydney Morning Herald Best Young Australian Novelist 2023. Her short story collection Women I Know won the Christina Stead Prize for Fiction in the NSW Premier's Literary Awards 2023.
Product Details
- Publisher: Simon & Schuster Australia (July 6, 2022)
- Length: 256 pages
- ISBN13: 9781761106828
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Raves and Reviews
'Seriously Good.'
– Michael Williams, editor of The Monthly
'The world doesn't need more of anything much but it does need more aberrant story collections about deranged women. Women I Know is that; it's spiky and sexy, a bit evil, and tender-wet on its underside. Katerina Gibson is a serious writer whose talent is going to envelop the whole world – you heard it here first. Reading this book made me genuinely excited and genuinely appalled by the depth of Gibson's promise.'
– Ellena Savage, author of Blueberries
‘[These stories] demonstrate an intellectual and imaginative power in their fearless probing into corners of the human world we didn’t even think existed until now. … an author prepared to question and disrupt everything. This is an assured collection, audacious, dark, comic, and full of surprises – it demands to be reread, several times.’
– Debra Adelaide, ABR
‘Smart, gleeful, savage, funny and genuinely brilliant. I kept wanting to cry out with joy! Katerina Gibson is a superstar.’
– Miles Allison, author of In Moonland and Fever of Animals
'Women I Know is a rich, contemporary blend of inventive and entertaining writing. Dark and funny, Katerina Gibson’s stories are sparkling with ideas – it’s thrilling that the future of Australian fiction is held in such talented hands.'
– Ben Walter, author of What Fear Was
'Come for the bold conceits, stay for the savage disaffection. These mind-bending stories startle, surprise, beguile and devastate. Gibson’s talent, in striking out from the shores of realism, is to bring us closer to the truths of contemporary life.'
– Jo Lennan, author of In the Time of Foxes
'In Women I Know Gibson expertly blends genre-bending plots with complex undercurrents of feeling and reflection ... Indeed, the thread that connects the protagonists of these vastly different stories is the lived experiences shared by all women, complicated and disturbing as they often are. Read together, the pieces in Gibson's fiction debut create an elegant and subtle whole, with delicate prose that moves the reader as expertly as it disturbs them.'
– Books+Publishing
Resources and Downloads
High Resolution Images
- Book Cover Image (jpg): Women I Know eBook 9781761106828
- Author Photo (jpg): Katerina Gibson Supplied by the author(0.1 MB)
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