“The stories in Blake Sanz’s The Boundaries of Their Dwelling pivot on acute moments as the hilarious gives way to the painful, the painful to the beautiful, and the beautiful to the truth. The characters in these stories are not lifelike so much as they are alive, rendered warm-blooded and human by Sanz’s pitch-perfect details and lucid prose. Here is a collection of dreamers young and old, all in search of home, family, love, a place where they can be fully themselves. It’s a riotous collection of stories that together capture the tumult of what it means to be alive.”—Brandon Taylor, judge, Iowa Short Fiction Award
“The Boundaries of Their Dwelling is a collection expansive and rich enough to hold the nature of family in all its facets. These characters go about abandoning and betraying and understanding and loving one another with all the complexity of real people. They convince, they live—and this collection is a stunning tapestry of their connections. Blake Sanz has written a beautiful, deeply moving book.”—Clare Beams, author, The Illness Lesson
“This expansive collection touches upon such a diverse mix of voices, lives, and cultures that each story ends with the anticipation of where Blake Sanz will take you next. From Mexico City to the coast of Louisiana, from downtown Dallas to the French Quarter, these stories touch a western gulf coast and deep South populated with characters on the edge of something: desire, self-knowledge, political revolution, methamphetamine. Sanz has the outsider perspective locked down tight—like if Holden Caulfield grew up playing basketball in Baton Rouge or watching daytime TV in the CDMX. And the endings! Sanz drops things that sound like young Denis Johnson mixed with Dubliners. Let’s be clear: there is some straight-up wild shit in here and this blistering new collection puts Sanz at the vanguard of a new generation of American writers. I can’t wait to read what comes next.”—Matt Bondurant, author, The Night Swimmer