THE STORY GOES

The shape-shifting fictions of Kelly Link.

- KRISTEN ROUPENIAN

Kelly Link is a writer whose work is easy to revere and difficult to explain. She began her career by publishing stories in sci-fi and fantasy magazines in the mid-nineteen-nineties, just when the boundary between genre fiction and the literary mainstream was beginning to erode, and, in the years since, her work has served to speed that erosion along. Thirty years into her career, she has received a formidable procession of prizes awarded to genre-fiction writers: the Nebula Award, the Hugo Award, and the Bram Stoker Award, to name just a few. More recently, she has begun to reap the accolades of the literary mainstream: in 2016, her collection “Get in Trouble” was a Pulitzer Prize finalist, and in 2018 she received a MacArthur, for “pushing the boundaries of literary fiction in works that combine the surreal and fantastical with the concerns and emotional realism of contemporary life.” Through it all, the essential qualities of her work have remained unchanged. To those familiar with her writing, “Linkian” is as distinct an adjective as “Lynchian,” signifying a stylistic blend of ingenuousness and sophistication, bright flashes of humor alongside dark currents of unease, and a deep engagement with genre tropes that comes off as both sincere and subversive.