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Picture
Literature, Fiction
ISBN: 
9781735601601  (Print)
9781735601618 (eBook)
$14.00 (Print); $9.99 (eBook)
Paperback, eBook

About the Author

BRADFORD PHILEN was born and raised in Raleigh,
North Carolina. He holds an MFA from the University
of Alaska in Anchorage, and currently writes and teaches
high school English in the Philippines, where he lives with his wife, kids, and dog Bear. This is his third book. His full list of publications can be found at
bradfordphilen.com.

When the Color Started: Stories

​
Bradford Philen

A straight-A Chinese-American high school student mourns the death of her mother and makes a new friend from Senegal; a suburban mother of three discovers that the Arab boy she lost her virginity to is now a jihadist; an American boxer in Thailand unexpectedly comes to a fight-night reckoning with his escort girlfriend and the local authorities.  Bradford Philen’s newest collection of stories gleefully dives into the problematic archetypes that loom largest in the American psyche—Beijing expat party girls, black single mothers in LA’s West Side, registered sex offenders—and dares to probe their inner lives with Chekhovian grace and understanding.  As a complex and provocative collection that openly challenges our most deeply held notions of authenticity in storytelling, When the Color Started delivers a sensitive and fearless depiction of how one half of a country dares to imagine the other. 

​Buy on Amazon, Powell's, or Barnes & Noble.

Advance Acclaim for When the Color Started: Stories

“A keen ear for dialogue, a sharp eye for local and regional detail, and an admirable ability to inhabit the lives of people from a wide cross-section of races, classes, and national origins.”
- Ed Allen, author of Mustang Sally  

“Like all great writing, When the Color Started defies being summarized.  Philen reinvents the world story by story.  The range of voices speaking here is astonishing.”
- David Stevenson, author of Forty Crows 

“Set all over the globe, these stunning stories track protagonists looking to run away, to reinvent themselves. Yet they get yanked backwards into the past. They want to be untethered, but first, they have messes to clean up . . . Witty, tender, excoriating, barbed, Philen’s story collection calls out and lays bare their eviscerating knowledge.”
- Kim Magowan, author of The Light Source and Undoing 

“The settings of Bradford Philen’s story collection circle the globe like a mad adventurer, but the stories themselves never leave the always teeming territory of the human heart.”
- Richard Chiappone, author of Water of an Undetermined Depth 
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