"Starck’s prose is by turns gorgeous and unsettling, creating a dreamlike tale that slides effortlessly between fantasy and reality as it interrogates such themes as forgiveness, generational trauma, and the responsibilities and burdens of motherhood. This is sure to resonate."
— Publishers Weekly
In March, Lindsay Starck's ('10) second novel, Monsters We Have Made, was released by Vintage Books. It received a starred review from Publishers Weekly which praised the novel's "supernatural mystery" as a "profound meditation on the power of stories." In North American Review, Jodie Noel Vinson suggests Starck's Monsters We Have Made "opens sage passage for readers to engage with the monsters of our collective imagination."
Starck's debut novel, Noah's Wife (G.P. Putnam's Sons), received wide acclaim upon its relase in 2016. Daniel Wallace, New York Times-bestselling author of Big Fish, praised the book, writing: “If I found out this book had been translated from French, I would learn French in order to be able to read it in the language it was originally written in. I love it." Melanie Benjamin noted the novel's "exquisite detail" and Starck's strength in writing "compelling" characters. Mary McGarry called Noah's Wife "an engrossing fusion of wisdome and beautiful writing."
Her story "Baikal" (which appeared in New England Review) won a 2020 Pushcart Prize:
"The seas are rising, the bees are dying. Etcetera, etcetera. We’ve all read the reports written by scientists like her. (Although we haven’t read hers.) On the other hand, the world’s been ending since the day that it began. In different moments of crisis, other generations worried that the world was ending. Whatever happens, she intends to be prepared. That’s why she taught herself to make a fire with flint and kindling. And that’s why, after she taught herself, she taught her husband. Because that’s what marriage means. When she walked into that office and discovered that her world was ending, her first instinct was to save herself. Her second instinct was to save him."
— from "Baikal," New England Review
Lindsay Starck was born in Wisconsin and raised in the Milwaukee Public Library. She is the author of Monsters We Have Made and Noah’s Wife, and her short fiction has appeared in AGNI, New England Review, Ploughshares, Cincinnati Review, and Southern Review, among other places. She lives in Minneapolis with her husband and her cattle dog, Cedar.