Unferth, Deb Olin
Entry updated 2 November 2026. Tagged: Author.
(1968- ) US author initially noted for her short stories, most of which have been assembled as Minor Robberies (coll 2007) and Wait Till You See Me Dance (coll 2017), many of them surreally apophthegmatic. She is of sf interest for Barn 8 (2020), a narrative which edges by steps into the very Near Future as Climate Change hits and an animal-liberation freeing of battery chickens goes sour when they turn feral. Elements of Beast Fable [see The Encyclopedia of Fantasy under links below] interfuse Equipoisally with scenes set several millennia into the future, after the planet has become too toxic for Homo sapiens. A similarly couched mourning for the planet infuses visions of the ruined world by the protagonists of Earth 7 (2026), whose varied responses to the coming End of the World – Suicide, emigration to wherever they might arrive in outer space, immurement in armoured enclaves, and so forth – make up a mosaic portrait of Homo sapiens nearing the buffers. The protagonists of the tale have sheltered within a benthic dome, in some part not to be associated with fellow humans: for we have ruined the planet. There is little to do, though it is sprightly expressed. Then there is nothing. [JC]
Deb Olin Unferth
born Chicago, Illinois: 19 November 1968
works
- Barn 8 (Saint Paul, Minnesota: Graywolf Press, 2020) [pb/Kimberly Glyder]
- Earth 7 (Saint Paul, Minnesota: Graywolf Press, 2026) [pb/Elizabeth Haidle and Vivian Lopez Rowe]
collections and stories
- Minor Robberies (San Francisco, California: McSweeney's Publishing, 2007) [coll: published as three boxed pamphlets: long title is One Hundred and Forty Five Stories in a Small Box: Hard to Admit and Harder to Escape, How the Water Feels to the Fishes, and Minor Robberies: pb/uncredited]
- Wait Till You See Me Dance (Saint Paul, Minnesota: Graywolf Press, 2017) [coll: pb/Kimberly Glyder]
links
previous versions of this entry