The Collected Fiction of Kenneth Koch

Collected fiction from one of America’s finest writers.

Hilarious and profoundly moving, this volume restores to print all the fiction of the writer whom John Ashbery called “simply the best we have.” An essential book for anyone interested in discovering what American literature might still hope to be, Collected Fiction includes Koch’s rambunctious novel The Red Robins as well as his semi-autobiographical stories from Hotel Lambosa. “The New Orleans Stories” and “The Soviet Room” appear here for the first time along with Koch’s previously uncollected short fiction—a warmhearted parody of a children’s adventure narrative and a story detailing the mysteries uncovered by an obsessive postcard detective. Collected here for the first time, Kenneth Koch’s fiction creates an optimistic and comic world in which the pursuit of happiness is taken very seriously.

Kenneth Koch (1925 – 2002), known for his association with the New York School of poetry, wrote many collections of poetry, fictions, plays, and nonfiction. His books include Seasons on Earth, On the Edge, Thank You and Other Poems, The Art of Love, One Thousand Avant-Garde Plays, Hotel Lambosa, and Collected Fiction, as well as several books on teaching children to write poetry. Koch was awarded numerous honors, including the Rebekah Johnson Bobbitt National Prize for Poetry, awarded by the Library of Congress in 1996, as well as awards from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the Fulbright, Guggenheim, and Ingram-Merrill foundations. In 1996 he was inducted as a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters.