How to Breathe Underwater

Julie Orringer

Feb 2019 · RB Media · Narrated by Catherine Ho and Nicole Wood

About this audiobook

A New York Times notable book and winner of The Northern California Book Award for Best Short Fiction, these nine brave, wise, and spellbinding stories make up this debut. In "When She is Old and I Am Famous" a young woman confronts the inscrutable power of her cousin's beauty. In "Note to Sixth-Grade Self" a band of popular girls exert their social power over an awkward outcast. In "Isabel Fish" fourteen-year-old Maddy learns to scuba dive in order to mend her family after a terrible accident. Alive with the victories, humiliations, and tragedies of youth, How to Breathe Underwater illuminates this powerful territory with striking grace and intelligence.

About the author

Julie Orringer was born in Miami, Florida on June 12, 1973. She is a graduate of Cornell University and the Iowa Writers' Workshop. Her books include the short-story collection How to Breathe Underwater: Stories (2003) and the novel The Invisible Bridge (2010). Her stories have appeared in numerous publications including The Paris Review, McSweeney's, Ploughshares, The Pushcart Prize Anthology, and The Best New American Voices. She received the Paris Review's Discovery Prize and two Pushcart Prizes.