Author’s Corner

Stephanie Dupal is a Franco-Canadian and American tenured professor of English who teaches composition, literature, and creative writing at Northern Virginia Community College, Woodbridge Campus. She earned an M.A. in English with a focus on postcolonial literature from James Madison University and an MFA in Fiction Writing from Fairleigh Dickinson University. She published two dozen stories, some of which were selected as finalists or winners for literary awards, appearing individually in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, and Norway. The Kindness of Terrible People and Other Stories is her first collection. She and her husband Travis live in the greater Washington, D.C. area and are parents to five children.

Stephanie Dupal’s debut collection of fifteen stories evokes in startling, lyrical prose the cruelties, misguided kindnesses, and surprises that accompany ageing and mortality in the lives of girls and women. Demonstrating a remarkable range of intimate dilemmas set in varied landscapes, these stories affirm the validity of characters’ choices and the courage—and rage—of their convictions.

In “”To Lie Engulfed in the Waves of the Sea,”” a renowned cellist lies to be hired at a performing arts school; in “”The Ethics of Keeping Company with Strangers,”” a strong-willed teenager and her father are stranded in a Utah desert; in “”A Baby of the Ganges,”” a grieving couple attempts to reconcile on a trip to Kolkata; in “”Godfrey Green,”” an art restorer, painting in the shadow of her elusive mentor, abandons her ambitions; and, in the emblematic final story “”Boys and Girls Swimming Like Dolphins,”” a Marine veteran and her husband fixate on the gender of their future child as they consider fertility treatments.

Among other characters inhabiting these pages are an inebriated mother who fears detachment from her son; a retired professor who lures her niece’s boyfriend into devastating, flirtatious conversation in the title story; a lonely widow who hunts an imposing raccoon; and a girl with a rare condition who becomes an unlikely heroine in Napoleonic France.

Richly imagined, The Kindness of Terrible People and Other Stories heralds a bold new voice in North American letters.

“Madeleine Bouletier, She-Wolf of Crozon”

The village of Gretons-sur-Mer commemorated the birth of Madeleine Bouletier, Napoleonic heroine, by erecting a large obelisk in the churchyard. Madeleine was born with an infant body covered in dark hair, which, as the years passed and the girl grew, lightened to a down of reddish-brown fur. On the Crozon peninsula of Brittany, she was the only such animal-baby at the turn of the century. Years before, there had been rumors of a bird-boy who could hover over the sea, buoyed by an enclave of wind against the coastline. Evidence of the bird-boy’s existence proved dubious: here a relic feather snatched from a merchant purse, there the hollow bone of a keel-shaped sternum, large enough to hold a human heart, encased in a glass box in Grosbras-Marie’s bakery. She used his sternum as a dough paddle and her breads had risen and multiplied in a miracle of golden crusts since. Villagers said she sold his furcula—his wishbone—to a sailor who had nightmare after nightmare while on land. And yet he drowned at sea on his next voyage.

Le pauvre petit.

The Gretoniers stopped believing in the bird-boy because what kind of living thing could have a wishbone and not bring immense luck to its surroundings? There had been in those years insufferable drought that dried children’s lips and gave the elderly nosebleeds. A scourging blight of mold spoiled harvests of stored wheat. People went hungry. When their bellies sounded hollow like gourds, they no longer waged their survival on half-breed fortunes. Prayers to saints returned, fulsome at first, and they vigorously ushered an age of penitence among the faithful.

And then Madeleine was born.

Madeleine’s mother had been pregnant for nearly ten months. This sometimes happened in villages: babies stayed past their welcome, dozing in amniotic fluid, swimming in their own meconium. Madeleine’s father had no money for the midwife, so when his beloved Sidonie writhed in pain on their straw bedding, he called on his neighbors from nearby farms, men and women who pulled out goats from breech positions and calves born in twos. Mère Anselme suggested they push down the swollen belly all at once, but her daughter Clothilde said it was a terrible idea because the moon was not yet full. It would be better to bathe the mother’s vulva in a solution of sugar water, to tempt the baby out, she said. While the neighbors argued about the correct method of extraction, Pouilleux-Jambe-de-Bois sat in a corner sharpening a long knife on a leather scrap, slowly forming a burr on the edge of his blade. Every so often, he brushed off the splintered swarf, which fell from his lap to the dirt floor. In the end, it was Pouilleux-Jambe-de-Bois who cut into Sidonie and released the wolf cries of Madeleine.

“Over the course of 15 short stories, Dupal showcases dynamic, daring characters unafraid to explore the darkest parts of themselves. These tales take place in a wide range of settings, from Hollywood’s Golden Age to the earliest days of the Covid-19 pandemic to 18th-century France and beyond. A woman embarks on a dangerous hike despite warnings of a storm in “Over the Mountain Steep.” In “A Baby of the Ganges,” a grieving mother, abroad and struggling to reconnect with her partner, regrets and reneges on a choice which might have helped her. In the collection’s title story, a retired university professor imagines seducing the man whom her niece has recently started dating while unveiling his own seedy history, while the opening tale, “To Lie Engulfed in the Waves of the Sea,” introduces a woman who, after a debilitating accident, is forced to lie in order to get a job, where she continues to lie in order to help someone with a secret wish. In another story, “Olympic Hopeful, 19, Dies After Winning U.S. Figure Skating Championships,” two adopted sisters must rely on each other, due to their mother’s neglect. Throughout, Dupal convincingly paints distinct character portraits and evokes vastly different time periods and locales. Still, her lyrical prose provides an identifiable signature across the entire work…Dupal’s acute attention to detail often gives way to glimmering insights. A well-polished and enjoyable first set, demonstrating impressive range and focus.” -Kirkus Reviews

“Let us not waste words: in The Kindness of Terrible People and Other Stories, debut author Stephanie Dupal gives us a masterful collection packing emotional and moral weight. Her prose is rich and precise; her characters are urgent and conflicted; and her intelligence, erudition, and ambition are always evident. In short, her book is a singular achievement.” 

-Jeffery Renard Allen, author of Song of the Shank and Fat Time and Other Stories

“Stephanie Dupal’s The Kindness of Terrible People and Other Stories is a stirring debut that deftly explores the power of relationships, and the fate and choices that achingly shape our lives. Across fifteen vividly rendered stories, Dupal writes with exacting grace and insight, crafting prose that hums with intelligence and feeling. A collection of remarkable depth and beauty.” 

-Karen Winn, author of The Society and Our Little World

“Stephanie Dupal’s outstanding debut collection of short stories contains prose of sophisticated wordliness. Her astonishing literary accomplishment features fiction of profound memory to go with a textured sense of place and person. Here you will find stories of wrenching loss and decisive possibility. The wayward souls appearing in Dupal’s collection deserve our attention, our eyes and ears.” 

-Nathan Leslie, author of Hurry Up and Relax