NATIONAL BOOK AWARD longlist nominee, Helen Phillips's debut novel,  And Yet They Were Happy  is "A gallery of marvels."--Washington Post Winner of the Leapfrog Global Fiction Prize A young couple comes of age in a surreal world of apocalypse, delight, longing, and tenderness.  A young couple sets out to build a life together in an unstable world haunted by monsters, plagued by disasters, full of longing—but also one of transformation, wonder, and delight, peopled by the likes of Noah, Bob Dylan, the Virgin Mary, and Anne Frank. Hovering between reality and fantasy, whimsy and darkness, these linked fables describe a universe both surreal and familiar. "Brilliant miniatures. . . . Like the fables of Calvino, Millhauser, or W.S. Merwin. . . . Beautifully blends short story and prose poem. . . . Mermaids, subways, floods, cucumbers, magicians. . . .The book is a gallery of marvels. Phillips guides us through the 'Hall of Nostalgia For Things We Have Never Seen,' 'the factory where the virgins are made,' and 'the Anne Frank School for Expectant Mothers.' A depressed Noah admits he 'didn't get them all,' a wife guesses which of two identical men is her husband, a regime orders citizens to grow raspberries on windowsills. [Helen Phillips'] quietly elegant sentences are as clear as spring water, haunting as our own childhood memories."— Washington Post,  Michael Dirda "A deeply interesting mind is at work in these wry, lyrical stories. Phillips exploits the duality of our nature to create a timeless and most engaging collection."— Amy Hempel "Haunted and lyrical and edible all at once."— Rivka Galchen "[ Helen ]  Phillips ' brashly experimental debut novel charts via linked fables the course of a young couple who fall in love, survive many floods, get married, have fights, make mistakes, and create a family—the whole shebang revealed in completely surreal yet oddly everyday prose."— Elle "Surreal miniaturist  Helen Phillips ’s debut collection,  And Yet They Were Happy , is full of gems."— Vanity Fair Helen Phillips received a 2009 Rona Jaffe Writer’s Award, the 2009 Meridian Editors’ Prize, and the 2008 Italo Calvino Fabulist Fiction Prize. Her work has appeared in  Mississippi Review  and  Salt Hill Journal,  among others, and in the anthologies  American Fiction: The Best Previously Unpublished Short Stories by Emerging Authors  and  The Hotel St. George Infinitely Expanding Library of New Fabulist Fiction.  Helen is a graduate of Yale and Brooklyn College’s MFA programs. She teaches creative writing at Brooklyn College.