Ethan Chatagnier has been awarded a Pushcart Prize in fiction and published stories in journals including Glimmer Train, New England Review, Georgia Review, Cincinnati Review, and Five Points. A graduate of Fresno State and Emerson College, he lives in Fresno, California, with his family.
photo credit: Laura Tellez
Warnings from the Future: Stories
Ethan Chatagnier
In ten provocative stories, Ethan Chatagnier presents us with characters in crisis, people grappling with their own and others’ darkness as they search for glimmers to carry them through difficult times, untenable tasks, uncertain futures. The collection explores with unflinching eloquence the quandaries of conscience posed by the present, but also plunges us into a startlingly prescient “what if?” world, exploring in both realms questions concerning the value of perseverance, art, hope, and heart.
In “The Law of Threes,” a reluctant cop tries to survive a night of frenzied police retribution. In “Miracle Fruit,” a genetic engineer is tasked with destroying the world’s last seed bank. “The Unplayable Etudes” follows a damaged yet brilliant pianist as she attempts to perform music designed to be impossible to play. In “Smaller Tragedies,” a conflicted photographer documents the aftermath of an earthquake, while in “Dentists,” a young man watches his neighbors flee under cover of night, fearful of the country-wide escalation of hate-based violence.
“He had walked around the far edge of the produce truck from the other side of the wreck, and was approaching her. He was not screaming, but he was not swaying his arms as he walked either. A thin line of dried blood went from his hair past his ear and down his neck. There is something about a person who is in true need of help, something that creates a beacon, even if they say nothing.”
152 pp., 5 1/2 x 8 1/2
ISBN 978-1-946724-03-8 (pbk)
ISBN 978-1-946724-08-3 (e-book)
PRAISE FOR WARNINGS FROM THE FUTURE
A Foreword INDIES Finalist
Real emotional intelligence. . . . Chatagnier is at his best when plumbing the emotional depths of ordinary lives —Kirkus Reviews
I seldom get this excited about a new collection of stories. Ethan Chatagnier has written a superb book, and I admired every one of these. They are inventive, gripping and surprising. He knows his characters inside out, and by the end of each story, you will too. —Steve Yarbrough, author of The Unmade World
and The Realm of Last Chances
While the stories expose systems of terrifying power in familiar settings—cops, corporations, dogmas, and demagogues—unexpected complexities and inverted dynamics continually crop up to distance the stories from didacticism or overfamiliarity. —Joe Sacksteder, Kenyon Review
By using a fragmentary structure and moving from one character to the next, Chatagnier allows us to quickly see this world through different lenses. It is hard to tell where our sympathies should lie: by switching POV, we are allowed to see everything from both sides. —Craft
Warnings from the Future, cover to cover, is a fantastic collection, which should surprise no one…What Chatagnier ultimately offers are insightful portraits of employees, grieving family members, decent cops, students and neighbors, i.e. real stakeholders in society, searching dearly for the humanity lost in the system. It is an enviable debut. —Avee Chaudhuri, Necessary Fiction
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