Winner of the 2025 PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize for Debut Short Story Collection   For those who've been sad and tried not to be, seventeen stories about the absurdity of searching for joy in a dying world. A neighborhood of picturesque content-creation houses perched on too-green lawns in a California desert; a meandering stampede of unleashed dogs on the streets of San Francisco; a skein of snow geese alighting in a state park in Missouri; an uncanny fundraising auction at an upscale suburban-DC prep school. Inhabiting these worlds of disconnection and dislocation are the "sad grownups" a middle-aged queer couple arguing over whether to have children, a college professor dying from cancer, two recent high school graduates plotting a robbery, a sixty-year-old counselor at a boys' summer camp sheltering herself from the realities of life-all connected more closely to the landscapes around them than to other people, searching fervently for liberation, understanding, and even happiness, wherever and however they might be found. Winner of the 2025 PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize for Debut Short Story Collection "A powerhouse collection from a promising author." —Lily Hunter, Booklist "Amy Stuber has written a distinct yet relatable collection of stories about aging, relationships, decisions and (dis)connections. This is a smart, sensitive and satisfying debut." —Karla Strand, Ms. Magazine "The stories in Sad Grownups are masterful. They feel both contemporary and timeless and engage American life today in ways that are at turns funny, insightful, and wise. I couldn't stop reading." —Cara Blue Adams, author of You Never Get It Back " Sad Grownups is a remarkable debut story collection by a writer who I already want more from." —Morgan Talty, bestselling author of Night of the Living Rez and Fire Exit: A Novel "Wise, inventive, and funny, Sad Grownups is also an incisive collective portrait of contemporary Americans: each story distinctly and decidedly itself, gathered together into a sometimes delightful, sometimes sobering snapshot of what it is to be alive today. In the tradition of Amy Hempel and Lorrie Moore, Amy Stuber is as sharp as she is tender, a delight to read." —Kate Doyle, author of I Meant It Once "Smart, funny, spooky and melancholy, Sad Grownups is full of unique gems that come together into a rewarding whole." —Dan Chaon, author of Stay Awake "Stories that hold the grief of the whole world but also the imaginative exultation of trying to live in it. Stuber writes sentences that are in a class of their own-flexible enough to twist from heartbreak into hilarity, full of observations so precise they leave you gasping. Sad Grownups is a brilliant collection." —Clare Beams, author of The Garden and The Illness Lesson "Amy Stuber's stories are about your neighbors and friends, the people you think you know, and what they are all hiding from you: the truth, which is that we are children and will remain so, that we are performing and we don't know it. Stuber's characters fumble through adulthood, they endure the confusing mysteries of growing up, they try to connect and instead create disasters. Sad Grownups marks the arrival of an erudite, controlled, and generous voice from the heart of America." —Richard Mirabella, author of Brother & Sister Enter the Forest "Some of the best writing these days can be found in literary magazines and small press publications. Amy Stuber's debut, Sad Grownups , is a case in point. It is perceptive, inventive, surprising, and deeply humane." —Amy B. Martin, Southern Review of Books "These stories...subvert our expectations of what stories can do and how they should do it. And, time and again, they ground us in our humanity." —Jody Hobbs Hesler, Another Chicago Magazine "Like all great stories [ Sad Grownups] , gave me a prism to place over my reading glasses, allowing me to see different facets of great joys, fears, and absurdities. Sad Grownups gave me an experience to treasure but also, like the best art, an object to return to and re-examine as I continue to evolve, persist, and decay." —Aaron Burch, Short Story, Long "Beautifully melancholic and full of warmth and hope, Sad Grownups is a must-read collection." —Electric Lit's Most Exciting Debut Story Collections of 2024 " Sad Grownups is sure to be timeless as well and is a necessary companion to an uncertain century." — Molly McGinnis, Los Angeles Review "Smart, touching, and sometimes frightening, this is a collection not to be missed. Stuber succeeds in making readers care about her characters while surprising them with turns that feel just right, and—who knows?—maybe even changing them for the better along the way." — Sarah Holloway, Necessary Fiction Amy Stuber's writing has appeared in the New England Review, Flash Fiction America, Ploughshares, American Short Fiction, Joyland, and elsewhere. Her bo