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I wrote a bit of a love letter to Polly Dugan's new collection So Much a Part of You in the paper this week; it's a really good book, and it's always gratifying to discover talented new Portland writers. (Last week's was Smith Henderson, if you missed it.)

Dugan's ship didn't come in overnight; as she told Steve Almond in a recent Rumpus interview, she started writing in earnest in 2006, after a long post-college hiatus from writing, and she attended the Tin House writers workshop four years in a row, before signing a two book deal with Little, Brown in 2013.

In my review, I wrote:


So Much a Part of You marries the scope of a novel with the graceful economy of a good short story. The linked stories in the collection are individually modest, almost unobtrusive. Set against one another, though, they reveal surprising connections—reflecting perspective and insight back onto themselves.


And so on.