It's No Fun Anymore is a haunting collection of eight stories, reaching into the darkest corners of modern womanhood to illuminate themes of trauma, identity, and the elusiveness of safety in our capitalist society.
A stay-at-home mother takes inspiration from a 1950s self-help book in a desperate attempt to reclaim her agency. A marriage implodes under the weight of a shampoo-sales pyramid scheme. The specter of generational trauma haunts a new mom in the delivery room. These stories juxtapose the everyday with the uncanny across diverse territories, from anime conventions to kindergarten classrooms. The result is an eerie familiarity, an intensity that lingers long after the final page.
Advance Praise for It’s No Fun Anymore:
"It's No Fun Anymore is a bracing read, a fearless collection that's willing to get weird and push the boundaries. These stories are incisive and visceral depictions of mothers on the brink. Each one digs into the real, beating heart of its characters, in all their messiness, anger, and humor. Brittany Micka-Foos is a gifted writer with an eye for the little details that make stories come alive."
— Tom McAllister, author of How to Be Safe
“Brittany Micka-Foos shows us the short story at its best: visceral, unflinching, and nail-biting. In these stories, the women protagonists bare the scars of childbirth and motherhood on their bodies and wear their anxieties on their sleeves, hyper attuned to the dangerous world around them and willing, if not always prepared, to do battle. If you want a collection that will bring a gun to a knife fight, this is the one. Unafraid and unapologetic, my only complaint was that I reached the end too soon.”
— Gwen E. Kirby, author of Shit Cassandra Saw
“A beautiful, haunting collection that courageously tackles the societal constraints so many women and mothers experience, the complexity of relationships, and the lingering residue of childhood trauma and male violence. Full of exquisite details and profoundly human characters, this gripping collection peels back layers with masterful care and makes us see ourselves.”
— Jennifer Case, author of We Are Animals
"I love the women in Brittany Micka-Foos’s It’s No Fun Anymore. One’s husband complains to her, ‘You see the sinister in everything.” What he views as a criticism is to me a testament to her savvy and her charm. These characters’ all-too-familiar anxieties about the human world and about their abilities to cope with and thrive in that world lead them to test themselves in ways that put me on edge, made me laugh out loud, and caused me to recognize myself again and again."
—Michelle Ross, author of They Kept Running and Shapeshifting
“In Brittany Micka-Foos’s extremely impressive debut short story collection, younger women, wives and mothers—some married, some not—contend with their relationships with the men in their lives and, in some cases, their relationships with their own bodies. The collection delights with its subtleties, dark hints, and surprises. The author’s voice is probing, questioning, and compassionate. Every story in It’s No Fun Anymore drew me in and left me thinking and caring about the characters long after I finished the book.”
— Lynn Levin, author of House Parties and The Minor Virtues
“Alternating between poignant, grim, and sometimes haunting stories, It’s No Fun Anymore cuts to the core of all our deepest fears about being a woman in the 21st century. In stark prose, Micka-Foos makes you feel the immediacy of her characters’ experience as they navigate motherhood, career, love, and getting out of bed each morning. Every story invites you to wrestle with the choices you’d make in the same situation, and that’s where the real fun begins.”
— Alexandria Faulkenbury, author of Somewhere Past the End
“Thoroughly unnerving … Gripping, sharply written tales that are rich in metaphor and atmosphere.”
— Kirkus Reviews
“Literary in its language, astute in its psychological contrasts and considerations, and hard-hitting in its diverse examples of women under psychological siege, It's No Fun Anymore is thoroughly engrossing and completely empowering.”
— D. Donovan, Senior Reviewer, Midwest Book Review
Brittany’s prose poetry chapbook, a litany of words as fragile as window glass, is available to order from Bottlecap Press.
a litany of words as fragile as window glass examines life in the aftermath of a suicide. Weaving in and out of memories, traveling through time, these prose poems are an inquiry into the life of a brother, an attempt to piece together a narrative and illuminate the legacy of trauma that precedes—and endures after—suicide.
This collection interrogates the limitations of language in the face of grief: the ways in which words fall short, the seeming futility of conveying such a personal and tragic loss, and the enduring necessity of the attempt.
Anthologies and Multi-Author Collections
Between Fact & Fiction (Whatcom Writes anthology), available at Village Books
Not a Trace and The False Portrait, published by SCARS
Blanket Stories, published by Ragged Sky Press
Preorder It’s No Fun Anymore at Village Books
or Bookshop.org.