The Great Grown-up Game of Make-Believe

Longlisted for the 2026 PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize for Debut Short Story CollectionFeatured on The Millions’ Great Fall 2025 Book PreviewWinner of the 2024 Autumn House Fiction Prize, these lyrical, haunting stories invite us to question the stories we tell ourselves and to imagine other paths—joyful, whimsical, even absurd—through the world. A wife finds herself literally shrinking in her house, day by day; a mother recalls the surreal day when her infant daughter survives a close encounter with a bear; and, inside her lover’s heart, a woman discovers a secret nightclub populated by all the women he’s loved and left. In the worlds, Woods conjures, childhood memories ripple through adult lives, and characters test the limits of their self-created realities. The Great Grown-Up Game of Make-Believe urges us to contemplate how we can escape loneliness and heartbreak and live on our own terms.