An electrifying debut from Stephen Hundley, winner of the 2019 Larry Brown Short Story Award, The Aliens Will Come To Georgia First offers an intimate glimpse into the lives of a working class, American south populated by people who have made themselves acolytes of existential powers. Set in Georgia’s swamps, foothills, forests, and barrier islands, each story explores the wild hopes and fears of men and women who grapple with death, distant lovers, and damaged families as well as sharks, stray dogs, and man-eating tigers.

A boy and girl find a body on the marsh, a delusional nude model takes on the fight of his life, and a diver visits a sleeping nuclear bomb just a mile from the beach. Tourists eat shrimp and cheer for dolphins while a man falls in love with his television and a handy-woman sees jellyfish-like travelers from outer space. These unique portraits of people and relationships stretch, prod, and redefine the dynamics that compose family, faith, and our sense of place.

Surreal and gritty, spiritual and rebellious, The Aliens Will Come To Georgia First forms its own galaxy of stories that mesmerize with their unflinching honesty, signaling the explosive entrance of a shining new voice in contemporary Southern fiction.

Stephen Hundley is a former high school science teacher from Savannah, Georgia, the author of The Aliens Will Come to Georgia First (University of North Georgia Press, 2023), and winner of the 2019 Larry Brown Short Story Award. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Prairie Schooner, Cutbank, Carve, The Greensboro Review, and other journals. He holds an MA from Clemson, an MFA from the University of Mississippi, and is currently completing a Ph.D. in English at Florida State University.

“Hundley’s stories are arrestingly lyrical: their red-clay, real-world images and actions often bear the intensity of dreams. They snap and bite and sear the heart.”

– Laura Newbern, author of Love and The Eye