Knopf has just bought worldwide paperback rights to Andrew Porter's short story collection THE THEORY OF LIGHT AND MATTER. Knopf plans to publish the paperback edition some time this winter.Porter's collection of stories received the Flannery O'Connor Award for Short Fiction and was published in October 2008. The book quickly won over critics and earned Porter comparisons to such writers as Richard Ford, John Cheever, and Raymond Carver for his elegantly plain language and deft exploration of suburban lives. Pulitzer Prize-winner Marilynne Robinson offered the following advance praise: "Porter's fiction is thoughtful, lucid, and highly controlled. It is especially striking for the strong consistency of vision that is achieved in every story. He has the kind of voice one can accept as universal--honest and grave, with transparency as its adornment." San Antonio Express-News critic Billy Taylor selected the book as one of the five best of the year noting, "Porter can achieve more in a handful of pages than most writers can in a hundred. I've read most of the stories in this collection two and three times, and I continue to marvel at how they can be so spare and rich at the same time. My favorite book of the year." The website Largehearted Boy also named it as one of the best story collections of the year and the book has been featured in such places as Texas Monthly, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Time Out New York, and Poets & Writers.
Porter is a native of Lancaster, PA, and a graduate of the Iowa Writers' Workshop. He currently teaches English and creative writing at Trinity University in San Antonio, Texas.
The Press will publish the next two winners of the Flannery O'Connor Award in October--Geoffrey Becker's BLACK ELVIS and Lori Ostlund's THE BIGNESS OF THE WORLD.
For more information on Porter visit his website: http://www.andrewporterwriter.com/.
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