New York Times“[Newman’s] characters move between stories like pieces in a sliding puzzle…their backcountry bravado — shooting wolves from turboprops, using float planes like taxis, plucking mastodon fossils from melting glaciers — is animated by Newman’s flair for description…We are all marching toward our demise, the title of Newman’s collection reminds us. But, as these vivid tales make clear, it is our “flinty, fearsome resolve” for survival that gives us life.” Full Review Here
Kirkus, Starred“Bighearted stories of domestic discord by a writer with a cleareyed view of Alaska's romance and hardscrabble realism.” Full Review Here
Vogue, Most Anticipated 2022 “The funny, earthy, and compulsively readable stories in Leigh Newman’s debut collection, Nobody Gets Out Alive (Scribner), are about wildness in all its forms. The author’s home state of Alaska is vividly rendered in its untamed, frontier beauty—but so too are its denizens, who are fierce Alaskans with questionable taste in home decor and hilariously unrefined personalities…. Newman’s fiction recalls the flinty humor of Annie Proulx, Ann Patchett, and Antonya Nelson—excellent company to be in.”Full Review Here
Oprah Daily, Most Anticipated 2022 From the winner of a National Magazine Award comes an austere, winning, atmospheric collection that broods on desperate lives amid Alaska’s “shiny flotsam of airplanes and speedboats and snow machines.” Newman navigates the emotional fissures in her characters—a distraught woman willing to drive thousands of miles from an abusive marriage; a wife caught in an affair, “her face a blur of panic”—but the 49th state is the real star, from oil-rich Anchorage to the solace of wilderness, landscape as destiny. Full Review Here
Booklist, Starred “All the stories are standouts, and readers, especially fans of Annie Proulx and Elizabeth Strout, will find much to appreciate in Newman’s unforgettable collection.” Full Review Here.
Publisher’s Weekly, Starred The author’s crisp portrayal of the Alaskan landscape and rugged culture holds the collection—and its magnetic characters—together. Newman firmly establishes herself as a talent with these stunning stories. Full Review Here
Anchorage Daily News “Superb…Always, Newman’s characters are well-drawn, resembling Alaskans we might well know ourselves…Newman writes beautiful sentences, paragraphs, entire pages. It’s a pleasure to flow through her evocations of a world she obviously knows well, loves, and renders freshly. If “nobody gets out alive,” everyone in her stories lives richly until that time.” Full Review Here
Chicago Review of Books “Newman has crafted a collection of stories set in a deeply unique place with compelling narratives about the people who live at the remote edge of the world. The collection highlights the pain and challenges of such a life, while constructing a rich depiction of the place.” Full Review Here