Hannah Dela Cruz Abrams received the 2013 Whiting Award for her novella The Man Who Danced with Dolls and her memoir-in-progress The Following Sea. She has also received a Rona Jaffe National Literary Award, a North Carolina Arts Council Fellowship, a Hartshook Fellowship, and a Byington Award. Her work has most recently appeared in, or is forthcoming from, Oxford American, Carolina Quarterly, and Mayday Magazine, among others. Abrams currently teaches in the Department of English at the University of North Carolina Wilmington.
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The Man Who Danced With DollsA Novella
The dining room was empty. There were dragons – dragon ashtrays, dragon statues, dragons carved into posts. In a remarkably misguided attempt at décor, there was also a profusion of mirrors. The result was upsetting.
The Man Who Danced With Dolls:A Novella -
The Man Who Danced With DollsA Novella
He had made dolls. The dolls kept him occupied when he could have been angry and kept him company when he could have been lonely.
The Man Who Danced With Dolls:A Novella -
The Man Who Danced With DollsA Novella
My father started going for walks early in the morning. He’d come in without his coat or gloves. The first few times, he would claim to have forgotten them, but eventually, he said simply, ‘I like the cold. It makes me feel awake.’
The Man Who Danced With Dolls:A Novella
"The Man Who Danced With Dolls by Hannah Dela Cruz Abrams is a tiny book that packs a lot of punch . . . The writing is beautiful, the subject matter significant, and the author’s attention to human nature impeccable.” —Small Press Reviews
“The Man Who Danced with Dolls is an enchanting, haunting, uncanny tale, bringing to mind the strange and unforgettable stories of Mavis Gallant. The voice is singular, the story a lyric meditation on loss that feels familiar yet wholly original in the telling, each sentence a feat of musicality, each moment in the narrative building a world that lodges in the reader’s memory. In her memoir-in-progress, The Following Sea, the powerful atmosphere of family secrets is evocative of Michael Ontdaatje’s memoir Running in the Family.”