Press
For press inquiries, say hello to Nick Davies at HarperCollins or Alyson Sinclair .
Press Quotes
Uproarious and ingenious… What sounds like mere novelty turns out to be a revelation in Burrows’s hands, as unlikely sentences generate even more unlikely narratives. Dictionary Stories is a joyful celebration of idiosyncrasy and invention.
Publishers Weekly (starred review)
Burrows has a talent for a delightfully askew existentialism… The stories are wickedly short but exquisitely rendered, accompanied by whimsical, minimalist illustrations by the author. A fabulist remix of the English language and a tribute to clever lexicographers everywhere.
[An] entirely original collection… With a deft eye for depth and irony, Burrows plucks seemingly inane phrases…and arranges them into haunting, hilarious, and human minidramas.
An inspired mashup of everyone from Robert Benchley to Borges and Burroughs.
I swooned for most of the short passages, appreciating how Burrows' sense of collage often found depth in this specific length. Dictionaries, in their mastery of catalog, are well suited for making lists, and Burrows' lists were majestic.
The question I kept asking myself as I read was “are these good stories?” [...] But to ask the question is to miss the point in the grandest sense. The stories are good, the book is delightful, and if you are like me, you will find both new appreciation for dictionaries, and a desire to write from them.
Burrows challenges our ideas of the writing process and unpacks our understanding of what is literary.
Uproarious and ingenious… What sounds like mere novelty turns out to be a revelation in Burrows’s hands, as unlikely sentences generate even more unlikely narratives. Dictionary Stories is a joyful celebration of idiosyncrasy and invention.
Publishers Weekly (starred review)
The very definition of a folly. Impractical, foolish, and (possibly) unprofitable... yet brilliantly, brazenly fun. Like a cabaret for word lovers.
Sean Michaels, author of Giller Prize-winning novel Us Conductors
Dictionary Stories isn’t just a book for word nerds, but for anyone for whom language and story matter. Everybody, A-Z, will find themselves thoroughly in love with this book.
Kory Stamper, lexicographer and editor for Merriam-Webster, and author of Word by Word: The Secret Life of Dictionaries
Jez has long been one of my favorite illustrators, and now he comes up with Dictionary Stories—sentences stolen from dictionaries and pasted together into tiny, delightful narratives. A brilliant literary remix.
Austin Kleon, New York Times bestselling author of Steal Like an Artist
Until you read Dictionary Stories, you’ll never understand just how weird the dictionary really is. Jez Burrows’ Dictionary Stories is all of human emotion and experience, handily arranged in alphabetical order.
Erin McKean, former editor of the New Oxford American Dictionary and founder of Wordnik