Now Playing

Like a buffet of desserts, Shellie Zacharia's stories are colorful, rich, and occasionally outrageous. Zacharia's intelligent prose delivers.
--Stefanie Freele, author of Feeding Strays

Funny, sad, touching and always entertaining, Shellie Zacharia's stories are little nuggets of human longing, a bittersweet blend of laughter and melancholy. Now Playing is a luminous collection overflowing with deft turns of phrase and sparkling wit, and an array of quirky, flawed characters we laugh at and laugh with. Zacharia strikes hard with humor, tenderness, and the sad realization that we all want something beyond our reach. The voices are pitch perfect; I can follow her characters anywhere, from a Bed Bath & Beyond to a guitar lesson class to your momma s disco. However outrageous or uproarious the situation, I always sympathize with the characters and wish along with them for a better place than where they are now.
--John Wang, editor of Juked

The characters in Shellie Zacharia's stories--usually female, always funny--enter these pages slightly perplexed by the world around them, confused and hurt by its failure to live up to their expectations. Expressed as daydreams and fantasies tainted by partially overcome regrets and past guilts, these once-high hopes are the true antagonists of these hilarious stories. Even when faced with long odds, Zacharia's characters carry on, persisting in their pursuits of happiness, resisting easy and formulaic epiphanies in favor of the truer triumphs recorded here, each one earned with cosmic charm and considerate compassion. Now Playing is a work of great grace, rendered with inviting, entrancing sentences that glitter forth from each and every page, and is a must read debut collection of short fiction.
--Matt Bell, author of How They Were Found and The Collectors