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The Trojan War Museum

And Other Stories

 
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  The Trojan War Museum

and Other Stories

WINNER OF THE STORY PRIZE SPOTLIGHT AWARD

short-listed for PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize for Debut Short Story Collection

“These stories are music. They beguile and illuminate.”
— NPR Books


“Bucak’s luminous debut taps folklore and real life to flesh out complex characters with an agile, inventive hand.” — O Magazine

“One of the best and most surprising collections I've read in a long time.” —Kelly Link

“This collection absolutely glows with life.” —Lydia Kiesling

“What a beautiful, wildly imagined book. The Trojan War Museum gives us stories with branching paths, and they resemble fairy tales, historical accounts, news reports, and dreams. This is fiction of great originality and great delight.” —Joan Silber

“This marvelous debut collection is truly rare in its range and depth, its deft mastery of history and myth, and its fearless story-telling.” —Andrea Barrett

“Bucak's stories are wide-ranging and capacious, formally playful, and moving.  They speak on behalf of women who are subject to fate and the tides of history. They speak of overcoming, of falling prey, of overcoming again.  They convey history's full force, but also the individual's willfulness, cunning, and compassion. These stories are also entirely contemporary and unique.” —Joshua Ferris

“remarkable, inventive, and humane” —Publishers Weekly

FOR SALE EVERYWHERE BOOKS ARE SOLD

Including Books & Books, W.W. Norton, and Bookshop.org


 

I was born in Istanbul, Turkey—to an American mother and a Turkish father—but spent most of my childhood in Havertown, PA, just outside of Philadelphia. You can find my stories and essays in a variety of journals, including One Story, Guernica, Bomb, Creative Nonfiction, Witness, Kenyon Review, Prairie Schooner, The Pinch, The Iowa Review, and Brevity. In 2019, Norton published my short story collection The Trojan War Museum. Two of the included stories were chosen for the O. Henry and Pushcart Prizes. A lot of my work has been written at residencies, including Yaddo, Studios of Key West, Willapa Bay AIR, Hedgebrook, the Betsy Hotel, and the Millay Colony for the Arts. I am an associate professor at Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton, Florida, and am a contributing editor for the journal Copper Nickel.

Curriculum Vitae

a pile of the hardcover of THE TROJAN WAR MUSEUM displayed on a wooden table
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Favorites:

“Lessons” by Justin Torres

“Unknown Costs” by Wilson MacConnachie Sims

“Buttony” by Fiona McFarlane

“The Bank of Paradise” by Monique McIntosh

“Outside the Raft” by Dantiel Moniz

“White Debt” by Eula Biss

“How to Write an Autobiographical Novel” by Alexander Chee

“Travels with the Snow Queen” by Kelly Link

“Other Types of Poison” by Rebecca Makkai

“The World, The Flesh, and the Devil” by Pinckney Benedict

“The Era” by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah

“Dogs Go Wolf” by Lauren Groff

‘Girl” by Jamaica Kincaid

“The Invasion from Outer Space,” “History of a Disturbance,” and “The Disappearance of Elaine Coleman” by Steven Millhauser

“Why Were They Throwing Bricks?” by Jenny Zhang

“The Hunter’s Wife” by Anthony Doerr

“The Swan as Metaphor for Love” by Amelia Gray

“You Are the Second Person” by Kiese Laymon

“Thirty-One Tiny Failures and One Labyrinth: On Parenting and Writing” by Oliver de la Paz

“Pelagia, Holy Fool” by Melissa Pritchard

“Stranger in the Village” by Phoebe Boswell

“The Sloth” by Jill Christman

“Parakeets” by Kevin Brockmeier

“Dead Doe” by Brigit Pegeen Kelly

“The Problem with Writing About Florida” by Kristen Arnett

“How to Do Nothing” by Jenny Odell

“The Governesses” by Anne Serre (trans. Mark Hutchinson)

“Once There Was and Once There Wasn’t: The Story of P” by Sara Deniz Akant

“Rumple. Stilt. And Skin” by Sabrina Orah Mark

“The Moon Fairy” by Sofia Samatar

“A Kiss on the Forehead” by Maria Tsvetaeva

“The Mushroom Queen” by Liz Ziemska

“Auntland” by K-Ming Chang

“Let’s Play Dead” by Senaa Ahmad

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EVENTS

April 11-13, 2024, Calvin Center Festival for Faith and Writing,

March 6, 2024, 7:30 - 9:00 p.m., Columbia University School of the Arts, lecture

July 28, 2023, 2:45-4:00 Virtual, Craft lecture. One Story Summer Conference. tickets for sale here: https://one-story.com/product/summer-lecture-series/

Reading, Broward College, Springfest, March 21-23, 2023. Full schedule here.

Fiction Fellow, August 17-27, 2022, Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, Ripton, VT

July 21, 2022, Craft lecture, One Story Summer Conference

March 1, 2022, Starry Nights Reading, Honors College Florida Atlantic University, Jupiter, FL

Fiction Fellow, July 20-August 1, 2021, Sewanee Writers’ Conference, Sewanee, TN

March 25, 2021, Minnesota State University, Mankato, Good Thunder Reading Series, Mankato, MN (virtual)

March 11, 2021, George Mason University, Reading (virtual)

February 10, 2021, 1:30 p.m., Society of the Four Arts, Palm Beach, FL (in person and virtual)

July 22, 2020 Bluegrass Writers Studio, Eastern Kentucky University (virtual)

April 30, 2020, One Story Literary Debutante Ball, Roulette, Brooklyn, NY (postponed due to Covid-19)

April 29, 2020, Greenlight Books, One Story Reading, Brooklyn, NY (postponed due to Covid-19)

March 7, 2020, AWP Offsite, Guernica, Rumpus and The Atlas Review Reading, 7=9 p.m., Bar America, San Antonio, TX (canceled due to Covid-19)

February 24, 2020 Key West Library Lecture Series, 7:00 p.m., Tropic Cinema, Key West, FL

February 13, 2020 Arizona State University, Stellar Alumni Reading Series, Tempe, AZ

January 8, 2020 Books & Books, Suniland, Pinecrest, FL

December 10, 2019 6:00 pm, Books & Books @ Studios of Key West, Key West, FL

November 23-24, 2019 Miami Book Fair, Miami, FL

September 16, 2019, University of Colorado, Denver

September 12, 2019, 7:00 pm, Florida Atlantic University, Boca Raton, FL

September 7, 2019 Slice Literary Conference, St Francis College, Brooklyn

Wednesday August 21, 2019 8:00 p.m., Books & Books, Coral Gables, FL

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My writing is represented by Julie Barer of The Book Group
You can contact me at pbucak at fau dot edu