The best magical realism books by women writers

In Orange World, Karen Russell guides readers expertly through a multitude of weird worlds, but in her hands the weird becomes familiar as we enter her characters’ inner lives.

The title story—about a mother striking a deal with the devil to protect her child, only this deal involves breastfeeding the devil himself—struck a chord with me, as my collection also focuses on motherhood, and I wrote many of the stories while in the throes of taking care of my young child.

Other standouts in Russell’s collection are “Bog Girl,” a love story between an ordinary teenage boy and a two-thousand-year-old bog girl; and “The Prospectors” a Depression-era ghost story. I’m inspired by Russell’s level of inventiveness and empathy, her richness of language, and her wide-ranging settings. 

When I first read Machado’s short story collection, it felt like someone had shaken me awake, slapped me, poured cold water over my head—the possibilities for what short fiction could do were blown wide open.

It’s hard to categorize this book as “magical realism,” as it is so much more than that: it’s reimagined fairy tales and horror stories; it’s speculative fiction and sci-fi and fabulism; it’s pop-culture experimentation, all seen through a feminist and queer lens.

Most importantly, though, it’s a book where language is treated as something alive and form something to be played with. Standout stories are “The Husband Stitch” (arguably her most “famous” story) and “Especially Heinous” (because I’m a Law & Order superfan and because the story is so inventive, funny, and penetrating).

Rock Eaters broke me out of a reading slump and was the most exciting discovery for me since Her Body and Other Parties.

It’s one of those collections where, after finishing each story, I thought, “I wish I had written that!” My favorites include “The Stones of Sorrow Lake,” about a town where residents grow a rock in their bodies in response to their first grief, and “Thoughts and Prayers,” a devastating story where strange angels appear on rooftops after a school shooting.

Like Machado, Peynado writes in a range of genres that expands to sci-fi and speculative fiction, but what I love most about these stories is how they serve as perfect metaphors for our world and how their strangeness reveals deeper meanings about our society, our relationships, ourselves. 

Full disclosure: Anne is a dear friend and was an MFA workshop-mate of mine.

But even if she wasn’t, I’m confident this would still be one of my favorite collections. There is so much magic in Valente’s writing, in the gorgeous prose but also in the content of the stories: ghosts, pink dolphins, tiny librarians, Northern Lights.

Much of the magic is not supernatural, but just the magic of the natural world, and Valente is a master of place; I’ve always admired her use of setting. Many of the stories deal with loss, grief, and pain, but the magic acts as a way to transcend these things, which is what I aim to do in my stories as well.

This was one of the books (along with Anthony Doerr’s The Shell Collector) that inspired me to pursue fiction writing rather than poetry.

For the longest time, poetry was my preferred genre, and while I had dabbled in writing fiction, I struggled. It wasn’t until reading The Girl in the Flammable Skirt near the end of my undergrad that I realized fiction doesn’t have to be straight realism—it can be magical, strange, symbolic, weird, fabulist, dreamlike.

Two of Bender’s stories that had the most impact on me were “The Rememberer,” where the narrator’s lover experiences reverse evolution,” and “Drunken Mimi,” a love story between an imp and a mermaid. Maybe not coincidentally, my book also contains a story about a mermaid.