Book Birthdays celebrate one year of a book’s life in social media posts, reviews, and more. This month we’re saying Happy First Book Birthday to Thanks for This Riot: Stories (Nebraska, 2024) by Janelle Bassett.
About the Book:
Thanks for This Riot explores the limits of kindness, the weight of being needed, and the fear of being misunderstood. A group counselor is taunted by a truth-divining piano bench, a voice actor shouts her abortion at the state capitol, a tired caregiver tangles with a pair of stand-up comics, a small-town newspaper office shelters an otherworldly tattletale, a backwoods acupuncturist leans on her least-exciting offspring, a girl in a strapless bra takes a vengeful go-kart ride, and a woman gets surgery to lower her expectations (she thinks it went “okay”).
Grouped by types of riot—external riots, internal riots, and laugh riots—Thanks for This Riot is a poignant and mordantly funny collection with a distinctly feminist viewpoint.
A Word from the Author:
I can feel this book gradually becoming the product of a certain time and of a certain me, like how a recent picture slowly becomes an old one, featuring a haircut you no longer have and clothes you’d no longer choose. The certain me that wrote this book was the pent-up mother of young children, which—it turns out—was a very fleeting version. I am glad to have this snapshot of her even if I someday feel that her collar, style, and outlook are embarrassingly outdated.
The best part of having a book out in the world has been the excuse to get my favorite people together and to travel much more than I normally do. I am so thankful to anyone who supported Thanks for This Riot in any way.
Reviews:
“An acerbic examination of family and femininity.”—Kirkus Reviews
“Bassett’s funny and arch book . . . features characters, mostly women—caretakers, counselors, retail workers, mothers, grandmothers—trying to resist the strictures of their lives.”—Dana Isokawa, Poets & Writers
“Thanks for This Riot is a captivating book from beginning to end. It is clear that Bassett is a talented writer, for each story contains unique characters and emotionally resonant themes. I highly recommend you check out this book, especially if you enjoy the art of short fiction.”—Dominique Weldon, Erato Magazine
“Bassett never writes a judgmental line—if you are looking for irony or eye rolls, they are not here. Her stories play in shadows without being dark or blindly optimistic. Accept that people and their flaws make a flawed world. There’s nothing to be gained by standing in the spotlight; make whimsey in the shade—it’s way more fun.”—Jeannine Burgdorf, Masters Review
“Thanks for This Riot shows us what happens when we reach for understanding instead of judgement. This is a collection I will be thinking about for a long time.”—Julia Romero, October Hill Magazine
“Janelle Bassett’s voice is one I can’t get enough of. The stories in Thanks for This Riot are fresh and unique and wickedly off-kilter but also burn with a wry, age-old, ironic wisdom. This collection is bitingly funny but sincerely so, with little lies and harmless untruths taking on an edge and inflicting irresistible damage.”—Timothy Schaffert, author of The Perfume Thief and The Titanic Survivors Book Club
“Janelle Bassett is a phenomenal writer. These stories are smart, irreverent, hilarious, and so wonderfully intimate. It is rare to find a writer who can balance humor with such earnest human emotion, and Bassett does it on every page. This collection is gold.”—Alison Espach, author of Notes on Your Sudden Disappearance and The Wedding People
In the Media:
Awards:
Winner of the Raz/Shumaker Prairie Schooner Book Prize in Fiction
Longlisted for the 2025 PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize for Debut Short Story Collection
On Social Media:
Seriously though, @hazmatcat is an incredible creator of fictive worlds that suck you in like the ghost of that tangy lemonade icee you dreamt about years ago and have never found anywhere except in the afterglow of a Bassett story. https://t.co/mdHyllGSA8
— Alina Stefanescu (@aliner) September 17, 2024
UNP blog 