What You See in the Dark

A doomed love story unfolds alongside the production of Psycho in 1950s Bakersfield, California

Muñoz’s debut novel tells the story of Teresa, an aspiring singer too far away from Los Angeles to share the city’s glamour. In Dan Watson, the most desirable man in town, she believes she has found someone to help her realize those dreams. But when a famous actress arrives from Hollywood with a legendary director in tow, local gossip about Teresa and Dan turns to speculation about the celebrity visitors there to work on what will become an iconic, groundbreaking film of madness and murder at a roadside motel: Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho. Framed by a foreword from film critic Charles Taylor, Muñoz’s haunting tale reflects “the slow winding down of everything that once seemed certain.”

MANUEL MUÑOZ is celebrated as one of the foremost literary chroniclers of California’s Central Valley. Northwestern University Press published his debut story collection, Zigzagger, in 2003, and are delighted to announce that reprints of his second story collection and his novel will be joining the acclaimed TriQuarterly imprint. Each reissue includes a foreword that celebrates the enduring, empathic power of Muñoz’s fiction.
 
Muñoz has been recognized with a Whiting Award, three O. Henry Awards, the Joyce Carol Oates Prize, two selections in Best American Short Stories and, most recently, a 2023 MacArthur Fellowship. His frequently anthologized work has appeared in The New York Times, Virginia Quarterly Review, American Short Fiction, Electric Literature, ZYZZYVA, andFreeman’s. A native of Dinuba, California, he lives in Tucson.