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An astonishing fiction debut from a UC Irvine MFA graduate and recent contributor to The New Yorker.

Bewitching and playful, with its feet only slightly tethered to the world we know, The Sea Beast Takes a Lover explores hope, love, and loss across a series of surreal landscapes and wild metamorphoses. Just because Jenny was born without a head doesn´t mean she isn´t still annoying to her older brother, and just because the Man of the Future´s carefully planned extramarital affair ends in alien abduction and network fame doesn´t mean he can´t still pine for his absent wife. Romping through the fantastic with big-hearted ease, these stories cut to the core of what it means to navigate family, faith, and longing, whether in the form of a lovesick kraken slowly dragging a ship of sailors into the sea, a small town euthanizing its grandfathers in a time-honored ritual, or a third-grade field trip learning that time travel is even more wondrous--and more perilous--than they might imagine.

Andreasen´s stories are simultaneously daring and deeply familiar, unfolding in wildly inventive worlds that convey our common yearning for connection and understanding. With a captivating new voice from an incredible author, The Sea Beast Takes a Lover uses the supernatural and extraordinary to expose us at our most human.

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Michael Andreasen holds a master´s degree in creative writing from the University of California, Irvine. His fiction has appeared in The New Yorker, Tin House, McSweeney´s, Zoetrope: All-Story, Quarterly West, and elsewhere. He lives in Southern California. The Sea Beast Takes a Lover is his first book.

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