That May not Mean What You Think

A visionary and profound new collection from innovative author Elizabeth Crane

Throughout her body of work, Elizabeth Crane’s literary vision has always been singular and innovative, twisting form and bending reality into new universes. Her latest collection, That May Not Mean What You Think, explores themes of aging and youth, gender and discrimination, and sex and love. In “Training Module,” Crane takes the structure and protocol of workplace harassment prevention training and turns it on its head; “The Box” tells the story of a woman trying to recover from divorce with the help of a literal unicorn; and “The Youngs” follows a group of teenagers experiencing loss for the first time, clinging to the belief that they’ll live forever. Across these delightfully weird and disarmingly truthful stories, American culture is refracted through humor and heart, asking readers to consider their complicity and to imagine new possibilities of participating in a better future.

Author Biography

Elizabeth Crane is the author of the memoir This Story Will Change and six works of fiction, including the story collection Turf and the novel The History of Great Things. Her stories have been translated into several languages and have appeared in numerous publications, including Catapult, Electric Literature, and Literary Hub. Her work is performed regularly as part of NPR’s Selected Shorts and has been adapted for film and stage, most notably with Chicago’s Steppenwolf Theatre. She teaches in the low-residency MFA program at the University of California, Riverside–Palm Desert.