Kathryn Scanlan comes to us as an oracle when we have never before been so desperately in need. The truths of our human affliction divulged in these icily precise, immaculately impolite, genius-spooked stories will undo you for your own good.

—Gary Lutz, author of The Complete Gary Lutz

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Kathryn Scanlan whittles sentences into weapons. The stories in The Dominant Animal are not cuddly; the dog jaws the baby like a bone; and humans, just as easily, gnaw at animals and other humans. The stories turn into poems, the wind blows through them and “scatters” us.

—Christine Schutt, author of Pure Hollywood

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Beautiful stories, carefully composed and balanced on the knife-edge of language as it begins to cut into the all-too-human. These stories dazzle like bright chips of mica agitated in the sun, but go on to reverberate against the world around you for days after you put the book down.

—Brian Evenson, author of Song for the Unraveling of the World

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Kathryn Scanlan's The Dominant Animal is a collection full of bright, weird, funny, bizarre yet familiar vignettes, each casting its own shadow. With equal parts unease and delight, I felt as if I were wandering through strangers' homes, seeing their private faces, listening in on their hushed or clipped or pleading conversations. This is a book that pretends to be unassuming only to explode in your hands. 

—Lindsay Hunter, author of Eat Only When You’re Hungry 

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