The Museum of Future Mistakes

Gruesome scenarios take a tender turn; beautiful moments become sources of derision. Winner of the BOA Short Fiction Prize, The Museum of Future Mistakes is packed with inventive narrative choices and sharp lyricism, upending expectations on every page.

In “Brother and Not-Brother,” the residents of an entire city transform into perfect copies of the narrator’s deceased brother; these uncanny doppelgängers spark meditations on childhood scars, grief taking root within the body, and how painful memories can bloom into joy, laughter, and love. In “The Last Dinosaurs of Portland,” two anthropomorphic dinosaurs yearn for companionship and empathy while fighting for a meager existence under the weight of past traumas. In “Three-Month Autopsy,” a character visits ex-lovers and returns Ziploc baggies full of their body parts, exploring infatuation, jealousy, regret, and the contours of both giving and receiving within a relationship.

Through these and other fabulist and magical realist stories, James R. Gapinski considers our physical relationship with our own bodies, how we process love and loss, and the fragility of identity amid moments of personal crisis. With elements of the grotesque and the surreal, fans of Carmen Maria Machado and Kelly Link will find much to admire in this award-winning collection.

James R. Gapinski (they/them) is the author of the novella Edge of the Known Bus Line (winner of the 2018 Etchings Press Novella Prize), named to Kirkus Reviews’ Best Books of 2018, and a finalist for the 2019 Montaigne Medal. Gapinski lives in Portland, OR.