Ling Ma, Morgan Talty, Boris Dralyuk and Isaac Butler are among the winners of the 2022 National Book Critics Circle Awards announced during a ceremony Thursday night at the New School in New York City.
Ma earned the prize in fiction for "Bliss Montage: Stories," her debut story collection, filled with offbeat stories that nod to her knack for surrealism: A woman living with all of her ex-boyfriends; friends popping pills that make them invisible; a yeti who seduces a woman to the smooth soundtrack of Janet Jackson.
"Ma rides a good concept when she finds one," Hillary Kelly wrote in a Los Angeles Times review of "Bliss Montage," a followup to "Severance," her widely acclaimed dystopian debut novel. She "pulls at the flesh of this juicy morsel until it is so distorted that it can no longer safely hold the seed at its center," Kelly added.
