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Elle
01-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Elle
Exclusive: Lauren Groff Reveals Her Next Book, the Short Story Collection ‘Brawler'
Every item on this page was chosen by an ELLE editor. We may earn commission on some of the items you choose to buy. Seven years have passed since the three-time National Book Award-nominated author Lauren Groff last published a short story collection: the beloved, Story Prize-winning Florida. In the near-decade since, she has published two additional novels—Matrix and The Vaster Wilds—and opened The Lynx, a bookstore in Gainesville, Florida. She's served as a chair for the National Book Award for fiction and edited The Best American Short Stories anthology. Last year, she was named one of TIME's 100 Most Influential People of the year. A letter from former President Obama hangs in her office. She reads hundreds of books a year and has provided many of her colleagues with glowing blurbs for those books. In other words, Groff is not only one of our 'finest living writers,' as fellow author Hernan Diaz put it to The New York Times; she's also one of our finest and most beloved literary citizens. So it's a relief to know that, in the midst of her ever-growing to-do list, coupled with the shifting gears of modern publishing, Groff has far from abandoned the short-story form. On Feb. 24, 2026, Riverhead Books will publish her next book, a story collection named Brawler. Groff says she's been working on Brawler for a number of years now, having pulled a few of its nine stories from as far back as 2016. Organizing each piece meant considering the collection's connective tissue: Despite its sprawling territory—Brawler jumps from Florida to California to New England and beyond, refusing to stay settled in any one place or time, or with any one cast of characters—the book feels neatly and distinctly of a kind. 'As I'm writing, I don't have much control over which stories come to me with urgency,' Groff says. 'But I do have control over the selection of the stories and the way that they speak to one another. The first story offers questions that are then modified as the stories go on—they're shifted, they're moved, they're seen in a different light. And then the last story has possibly the hardest job, which is to take all the questions that have been asked throughout the story collection, and fragment them, right? I fragment them outward, and create a sense of backwards cohesion.' Brawler's assembled stories follow a mother and her children attempting to flee an abusive husband; a young woman newly responsible for her disabled sibling; a talented but angry swimmer awash in her parent's pain; a group of old classmates gathered to say goodbye to their dying friend; a stunted business scion yearning to make the woman he's fallen for 'presentable' to his family; and more. Each piece brushes up against, as Groff puts it, 'the violence that lurks within familial spaces,' which echo within the 'larger moments of cultural violence that I think we've been in for a very long time.' She continues, 'I was thinking about a lot of the hidden loves and the hidden costs of family—a lot of the secrets that we keep from one another.' The cover features the titular 'brawler' from Groff's story of the same name, first published in The New Yorker in 2019. 'Brawler' became the title of the collection after Groff's literary agent, Bill Clegg, suggested it. 'He was like, 'Of course you're going to call it Brawler,'' Groff says, laughing. 'And I don't know about you, but right now I feel like we need to fight. There's a lot of laser-like rage happening now, and so, of course, it would make sense to have a book called Brawler out.' Brawler's official artwork—designed by Jaya Miceli and featuring the swimmer in black-and-white, her reflection mirrored in an inky blue pool—was immediately Groff's favorite of the options Riverhead sent her. 'It was the one that I gasped when I saw it,' Groff says. 'I was a swimmer, and I have so much love for this girl. I love the way that her swim cap fades into the water, and the way that, if you turn the image upside down, it's a completely different book. It kind of takes your breath away.' As a writer, a bookseller, and the aforementioned literary citizen, Groff insists that the breathtaking nature of such art is, in fact, an issue she considers 'morally urgent.' That's what keeps her returning not only to her novels, but to the creation and curation of her short stories. 'There are times,' she says, 'that I feel unequal to the task of writing in this world because, with the gravity of everything that's going on, you can trick yourself into believing that it's not important, right? Or that it's not important enough to meet with your full soul, because there are people suffering.' To that idea, she responds with a quote from the William Carlos Williams poem 'Asphodel, That Greeny Flower': 'It is difficult / to get the news from poems / yet men die miserably every day / for lack / of what is found there.' Groff continues, 'I do feel very deeply that loving attention to the soul—which is what art is—is just as important, if not more so, than constant attention to the news or to Bluesky or to Instagram. I'm not saying that an individual soul can heal the world,' she concludes. 'But I am saying that, if we collectively paid more attention to our own particular souls, possibly the world would be better than it is now.'Brawler is out from Riverhead Books on Feb. 24, 2026.
Boston Globe
08-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Boston Globe
Anne Bogart's Boston Lyric Opera ‘Carousel' spins in circles
Like her 'South Pacific,' Bogart's 'Carousel' is metatheatrical, at least in theory. Press releases indicated the company is a 'traveling group of outsider artists' that puts on a production of the musical at an abandoned amusement park. Sara Brown's weathered wooden sets, including a towering roller coaster and a rotating circular dais, hinted at that intention; as did the colorful costumes, wigs and makeup by Haydee Zelideth and Earon Chew Nealey, which included plenty of ruffled skirts and neon-colored hair, a leather vest on the carousel barker Billy Bigelow (the outstanding baritone Edward Nelson), and one eye-catching tiger onesie. Theatrically post-apocalyptic and rough around the edges, it felt like a cousin of the 'Traveling Symphony' Shakespeare troupe as depicted in Emily St. John Mandel's National Book Award-nominated ' Get Starting Point A guide through the most important stories of the morning, delivered Monday through Friday. Enter Email Sign Up That framing device also did its part to explain the over-the-top acting of some of the side characters, for example Theophile Victoria's David Bascombe. The script makes Bascombe out to be a condescending enforcer of masculine Christian morality; Victoria, clad in a sweeping coat and top hat, gave the role a preening high camp twist. Advertisement However, in the program, Bogart's director's note indicated that the players are 'a group of refugees' that arrive from 'a great distance, seeking to gain access and acceptance.' This was represented by the tall rolling fences that took the place of curtains, behind which the company assembled during the overture and entr'acte, as well as actors dressed as unsmiling security guards positioned at either side of the stage throughout the show and intermission. Initially it seemed the guard characters were intended to be on the audience's side of the fourth wall, as they pointedly refused to interact with the actors' antics during the joyous clamor (choreographed by Shura Baryshnikov) of 'June Is Bustin' Out All Over,' but when a character called the police within the musical, those guards were the ones who answered the call. Otherwise, the refugee angle went unexplored, and it felt like a cheap afterthought. Jamie Barton as Nettie and the cast of Boston Lyric Opera's "Carousel." Nile Scott Studios Under all the colorful ruffles and found-object props, it was still 'Carousel,' played mostly straight. The company deployed a robust orchestra under the baton of David Angus, and a strong cast to carry the score and story of Rodgers and Hammerstein's 80-year-old musical. Advertisement Making her BLO debut, mezzo-soprano Jamie Barton brought a terrifically full voice and overflowing heart to Nettie Fowler. Soprano Brandie Sutton, also a BLO first-timer, wore her fast wits like a crab wears its shell during her first scenes as Julie Jordan, making her later resignation to Billy's abuses even more tragic. Nelson was a compelling and emotionally infuriating Billy; already giving the impression of a confused and terrified young boy in a man's body, 'Soliloquy' only sealed that deal. Might we see him as Sweeney Todd in a few years? Soprano Anya Matanovič's effervescent Carrie Pipperidge was a delight, as was tenor Omar Najmi's stuffed-shirt Enoch Snow; their 'Say something soft and sweet' / 'Boston cream pie!' squabble earned several giggles. Baritone Markel Reed, as the scheming, strutting Jigger, snatched attention during 'Stonecutters Cut It on Stone' with an immaculate comic verse sung up an octave. Abigail Marie Curran's Louise landed onstage like a hurricane in the Act II dream ballet, wild-eyed and barefoot; her thrashing, whirling limbs beat at the bars of an invisible cage. (Costume team: nice job dressing the kids in Act II in a mixture of their parents' signature colors.) But 'Carousel' sung well still has the problem of being 'Carousel,' in which a teenage girl earnestly asks her mother if it's possible for a man to hit you but it feels like a kiss, and that mother saying 'it's possible, dear,' as the music swells. Nicholas Hytner's acclaimed 1990s production changed the tenor of that scene by having Billy Advertisement This production almost seemed to rush through that scene, crossing fingers no one would remember it in the wake of the uplifting graduation address given by the Starkeeper/Dr. Seldon (played by Boston Foundation president and CEO Lee Pelton) and subsequent finale-reprise of 'You'll Never Walk Alone.' The ultimate scene on Friday encapsulated many of the problems with this 'Carousel,' as the house lights illuminated and Pelton addressed the audience, with the company standing behind him. Were we meant to be the townsfolk, in-universe? Were we meant to be the audience of the traveling troupe? A community with the power to welcome refugees, which might choose not to? No one seemed to know. When Pelton asked a question that begged for a loud and affirmative audience response, I heard one lonely 'yes' from somewhere nearby. Before people join up with any cause, they need to know they're not just spectators. Some need to know that simply watching is no longer an option. This 'Carousel' had the opportunity to jolt us out of our comfortable seats; instead, it turned us in circles. A.Z. Madonna can be reached at
