Anything You Recognize: Stories

ANYTHING YOU RECOGNIZE is the exuberant new collection from the acclaimed author of Nights I Dreamed of Hubert Humphrey and How Animals Mate. In Mueller’s latest, the central cycle of stories follows an upwardly mobile family navigating the late ‘60s in west Texas, with an adventurous young boy coming face to face with the era’s newly blurred lines around sex, race and family. From an inexhaustible storehouse of period details, Mueller sets the unbridled freedoms of bike-riding boyhood against the subtle and not-so-subtle pressures of newly liberated adults — and then adds several stories set years later, including a dreamy backpacker’s hilarious fantasies of his would-be girlfriend to scenes from a circle of aging gay artists, reminders of the ever-shifting boundaries we all still face.

Daniel Mueller is the grateful recipient of fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, Massachusetts Cultural Council, Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, University of Virginia, Iowa Writers' Workshop, and Sewanee Writers' Conference. Mueller teaches on the creative writing faculties of the University of New Mexico, Low-Residency MFA Program at Queens University of Charlotte, and Tinker Mountain Writers' Workshop.