‘With Teeth’
— Reneé Bibby
Give me an intimate object come to life, insatiable and sentient, and I am yours. Anything where the boundaries of metaphorical and literal blur together, opening a space for profound fiction. At the center of Kristen Arnett’s story, ‘With Teeth,’ is a chair that consumes; at the center of Arnett’s story is a family. The specifics of the characters involved are brief, but the emotional truths of this story are dark and deep. The chair is the history of the family and every seam of it reveals the dynamic of people who are tied by blood and circumstance to each other—the heartache, large and small cruelties, and yes, even love of family.