Stacia Saint Owens

“The winner of the prestigious Tartt First Fiction Award is also brutal, funny, sexy, and consistently compelling. Spanning thirteen tautly written short stories, Saint Owens recalibrates Hollywood’s soft filter focus into stark high definition and reveals the flaws and scars that can only be seen at pointblank range. Auto-Erotica is an unflinching and panoramic vision of the lives of the famous, almost famous, and the infamous.”

---- Alabama Writers’ Forum  full review



“There’s blood and bile but also weird beauty in Stacia Saint Owens’s debut collection of short stories, Auto-Erotica. .... Her acrobatic telling mimics the antic conflicts and dimensions of the characters themselves, making this an eminently stylized and accomplished collection. ... Auto-Erotica proves Saint Owens to be a writer with fire in her fingers and a dark weather in her heart.”

---- Rain Taxi Review of Books  full review



“At any given time, everyone has their own story, marginally related to each other. Auto-Erotica follows this concept as author Stacia Saint Owens tells the story of many individuals throughout the city of Los Angeles. Scams, insane mothers, prostitutes, cults, and more are all the subjects that Saint Owens weaves into an entertaining, if sometimes disturbing read. Auto-Erotica is a top pick for contemporary fiction collections, highly recommended.”

---- Midwest Book Review full review



“Luminously insightful and lyrical. Deliciously brutal in its compulsion to deconstruct. It’s like a razor blade dissecting the female psyche. A beautiful debut.”

---- Joe Russo, director “Captain America” film franchise; Executive Producer, “Community” NBC series; Emmy Award-winner, “Arrested Development”



“Auto-Erotica is less a collection of short stories and more a cohesive musing on a single character: Los Angeles. With scalpel prose and crystalline wit, Saint Owens dissects her protagonist, peeling away layer after plastic layer and repeatedly leaving us with an oddly beautiful vertigo as she reveals the abyss beneath.”

---- Nic Kelman, author of international bestseller girls; screenwriter, “Genneris” (Dreamworks); “Outpost” (Paramount); “Emergence” (Centropolis Entertainment)



"Inspired and charmingly insightful yarns about a city we think we all know so well until a writer like Saint Owens comes along and captures it through a refreshingly sharp, new lens."

---- George Hickenlooper, director and screenwriter, “Factory Girl”; "Casino Jack"; "Mayor of the Sunset Strip"; Emmy Award-winner, “Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker’s Apocalypse.”



“Animated by characters infected with the clawing hunger of the Hollywood dream machine, Stacia Saint Owens’ Auto-Erotica hums with surprise and revelation. At turns horrifying, poignant, and hilarious, these thirteen keenly observed stories pull off the amazing feat of rendering a world we recognize but have never quite seen before, populated by Saint Owens’ living, breathing, struggling and striving, fully human and fully realized characters.”

---- Samuel Ligon, O. Henry Prize Finalist; author of Drift and Swerve and Safe in Heaven Dead; Editor of Willow Springs magazine



“Stacia Saint Owens is a talented writer with a signature wit and theatrical style.”

---- Sarah Ruhl, Pulitzer Prize Finalist; Tony Award nominee; MacArthur “Genius Grant” Fellow; writer of The Oldest Boy; In the Next Room and The Clean House