About the Book

Noley Reid’s fourth book, Origami Dogs, is a testament to her mastery of the form. Here, dogs rove the grounds of their companions’ emotions. The creatures in this short story collection often act subtly, serving as witnesses without language, exacerbating tension and providing relief to the human characters. Sometimes they are central to the stories’ plots, such as in the lead story, “Origami Dogs,” which focuses on Iris Garr, a dog breeder’s teenage daughter, as she begins noticing odd birth defects in new litters and realizes she must confront her mother, whom she loves yet cannot help but resent. In some stories, teens struggle toward womanhood or wrestle with sexuality and queerness, confronting parents who are unable to provide the care or support they need. In other stories, Reid’s characters are adults striving to be better spouses, parents, or both, and are often grappling with life-changing events—like a new disability or the loss of a child. Despite the gravitas of these tragedies, with Reid’s touch, they feel alive, present, and painfully close. Reid brings us to her characters in the fierce damp aftermath of calamity and asks us to dwell with them until new possibilities arrive.

At these tipping points, the characters of Origami Dogs stand ready with their dogs (or memories of them), to take the next step. By turns tender, moving, and devastating, this story collection is a celebration of the bond of devotion possible between humans and dogs, and it presents an intimate rendering of the lives we share.

Praise for Origami Dogs

Won the Bronze/3rd Place award in the 2023 Feathered Quill Book Awards Program for the Animal-Adult category and also named a Finalist in the Short Story/Anthology category

Listed in the Independent Book Review‘s “30 Indie Books to Look Out for in Early 2023“

These tales highlight morally complex situations that don’t have easy solutions, and they don’t hide from the unpleasant truths of the characters. Reid allows them to make mistakes and bad decisions without losing sympathy or compassion for them.
—Kirkus Reviews

In every story of Origami Dogs, Reid’s tenderness for her characters shines through, illuminating their beautiful yearning for connection, love, and acknowledgment. I read with my heart in my throat, eager to follow wherever Reid took me, and eager to linger with each character before they were gone.
—Gwen E. Kirby, author of Shit Cassandra Saw

Whether they’re breeding dogs or raising lambs, felling trees or crossing floodwaters, burning their dinners or falling in love with the wrong people, the everyday heroes of Origami Dogs tug on your heartstrings as they whisper their sweet, sad stories. You will fall in love with these people. You will fall in love with this book. The best collection yet by a master of the short story form.
—David James Poissant, author of Lake Life and The Heaven of Animals

Origami Dogs folded my mind into a quivering heart. Within its pages, Noley Reid captures contemporary society’s terrible turbulence and grace-filled consolations like no one else. To borrow from one of Reid’s own gems, these fierce stories are the bubbling, fiery, terrifying, gorgeous “innards of a volcano.”
—Ethel Rohan, author of In the Event of Contact

Noley Reid’s compassionate collection doesn’t shy away from the violent and grotesque, nor the intimate and beautiful. These stories are about pets, yes, but they’re also about people—about all of us, really—and how we navigate traumas created by ourselves and inflicted upon others, all while the animals in our lives watch with bewilderment. Always engaging and often harrowing, Origami Dogs delivers powerful stories that will stay with you long after you’ve read them.
—Michael X. Wang, Winner of the 2021 Pen/Robert W. Bingham Prize for Debut Short Story Collection

Noley Reid is the author of the novels Pretend We Are Lovely and In the Breeze of Passing Things and the short story collection So There! Her stories and essays have appeared in The Southern Review, The Rumpus, Arts & Letters, Meridian, Pithead Chapel, The Lily, Bustle, Confrontation, and Los Angeles Review of Books. Reid holds an MFA from George Mason University. She taught creative writing for 18 years in […]

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