Exile in Guyville

Audiobook now available!

In the stories of Exile in Guyville, probable futures and alternate realities take aim at unruly women, and show how they refuse to be ruled. With a speculative and surreal style, Lillard’s prize-winning collection explores a living museum of women from across time; a life app that forces women to comply with beauty standards; a future internment camp with a literal race for survival; and a band of middle-aged Riot Grrrls, taking vengeance with a new power. With humor, rage, and a razor-sharp eye for detail, Exile in Guyville renders the invisible as seen, and the powerless as empowered.

Praise for Exile in Guyville

"Each of these six enthralling speculative shorts from Lillard (Dig Me Out) explores female agency to powerful effect. Several offer dark views of the future. Women are imprisoned and subjugated in both 'Blackbird,' set in a gendered internment camp, and in the title story, about living women who are displayed in a museum and the new curator determined to effect change from within. The heroine of 'Typical Girls' is implanted with an oppressive AI companion marketed as a tool to improve women’s lives. 'Corporeal' explores the idea of alternate realities and alternate selves, while the quiet 'Wintersong' delves into the dissolution of a relationship. The final story, 'Things You Say,' sends the collection out on a slightly more hopeful note, showing women reclaiming their agency, inspired by their Riot Grrrl idols. Brief but mighty, this packs a hefty punch." —Publishers Weekly, starred review

“Amy Lee Lillard's Exile in Guyville takes you on a deeply poetic journey of women in exile. Women out of time, women out of place, women out of their minds, and women out of luck leap from this haunting, beautiful, slender short story collection that stays with you long after you close the book. This is a terrific collection of sneakily powerful writing and an unfettered, wild imagination." —Chelsea G. Summers, author of A Certain Hunger

“Lillard’s collection is explosive and inventive, balancing humor and horror as each story explores the ways in which women’s identities are built, broken, and rebuilt. I would happily be exiled with these complicated, stubborn, fierce, indomitable women!” —Gwen E. Kirby, author of Shit Cassandra Saw