Reviews & Mentions

New York Times Book Review
"It will be tempting, but hard, for readers to choose a favorite among the stories here."
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New York Times - 'Book of the Times'
"This is such a fine collection that there's not a stinker in the bunch... Mr. Pierce’s originality, inventiveness, questing spiritual intelligence and animal fixation aren’t easy to do justice to in the limited space here..." 
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L Magazine
"...a stunning debut... radiantly imaginative, brilliant and unexpected, wry and moving and funny."
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Nature Magazine
"These science-flavoured short stories... dance at the edge of possibility, exuding an off-kilter brilliance in their exploration of human longing and fear."
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Oxford-American
(An Illustrated Review)
"The lives Pierce has created in his extremely absorbing debut are visceral, fully-realized, and present for us a reminder of what a single short story can do."
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NPR
"There isn't a weak story in Hall of Small Mammals, and Pierce is an endlessly incisive and engaging writer.  It's a book full of wisdom and emotion..." 
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Star Tribune
"With its elegant prose and revelatory insights, “Hall of Small Mammals” announces a vivid and engaging new voice."
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Library Journal
"Quirky but real; for all readers."

GQ
The Six Best Books of January
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Buzzfeed
27 of the Most Exciting New Books of 2015
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Bookslut
"Hall of Small Mammals is a skilled collection of explorations on what it means to believe."
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The Millions
Most Anticipated: The Great 2015 Book Preview
"Pierce’s stories are beautifully written and suffused with mystery."
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Bustle
Eleven of January 2015's Best Books...
"...a fresh dose of modern irreverence. He’s a huge talent — one to keep an eye on."
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Washingtonian 
Top Ten Books for January 2015
"...Pierce uses the form properly, making each story in his debut as glittering and multifaceted as a single gem—but with a jeweler’s eye, stringing pieces together so that they also work as real collection."
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Elle Magazine
"...Pierce mines the mysterious rift between fantasy and reality with the intricate skill of an archeologist and the sheer wonder of an imaginative child."
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The Columbus-Dispatch
"...he balances the incredible incident in each story with powerful — and emotionally involving — insights into his characters."
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Publishers Weekly, Starred Review
"The book is expertly paced (there isn't a dud in this eclectic bunch) and many of the stories' endings--some sinister, some melancholic, others heartfelt--prompt momentary reflection, though thankfully not always in ways that are expected."  
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Kirkus Review
"Pierce clearly has talent to burn.  A promising debut that studies hard-luck types from new and provocative perspectives."  
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Interviews

The New Yorker
"I’m tempted to call what I’ve written an anti-escapism story. Dom’s grand space adventure occurs in the white space—in a paragraph break."
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Electric Literature
A conversation with Electric Literature's Halimah Marcus at The Community Bookstore in Brooklyn.
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The New Yorker
"[It] began as a single image—the image of a man with a gas mask pulled sideways so that he could drink his sweet iced tea."
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The Atlantic
A conversation about Straw for the Fire, the notebooks of Theodore Roethke.
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Electric Literature
(with Diane Cook)
"The characters might not know each other personally... but I’d like to think they could, by chance, all wind up on different aisles of the same grocery store one Saturday morning."
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Paris Review 
(With James Yeh)
"If you’re going to shut your friend up and tell him a story, it’s good manners to make something happen."
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Late Night Library
"The mind wants a story that explains things and it will perform some strange contortions to keep the story intact.
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Brazos Bookstore
"If I’m writing around something, it’s not because I’m trying to avoid it but because I can’t adequately express it."
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Dinner Party Download
A reading from "Shirley Temple Three"
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LargeHearted Boy -- A Playlist for Hall of Small Mammals
"This isn't necessarily the music I listened to as I was writing. This is the music I would pick if I was directing the book like a radio show (or film)."
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NPR's Weekend Edition
"I wanted... to find the real people, the people whose lives exist on either side of those three or four second clips."
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The New Yorker
"Was there a more fundamental, immaterial self beneath or beside or behind or above (prepositions fail me here) the brain-self?"
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Oxford-American
"I"m not sure I have rules.  I do try to treat every character like someone who could track me down after publication to lodge a complaint--or worse."
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The New Yorker
"Rejecting new information and not asking questions leads to stagnancy, and stagnancy is probably more insidious to faith than a mammoth or the fossil record could ever be."
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