Python's Kiss

by Louise Erdrich

From Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award-winning author Louise Erdrich, a captivating collection of short stories

It was as though I was chosen—marked out by the python’s kiss for wisdom or maybe sorrow. Or perhaps, I think now, a sense of the ridiculous in extremes of experience. Also, I hoped for a long life.

WRITTEN OVER THE PAST TWO DECADES, Louise Erdrich’s magnificent story collection features a range of characters—a tribal newsletter editor whose son tells her a story that nothing in her experience can encompass, immigrant farmers whose tenuous hold on the earth, and sanity, is challenged, and ordinary people, bird lovers, artists, grade-school teachers, and romantics. A girl decides to spend her life with a stone. A man is confronted with a folk-singing thief. A woman enters a corporately owned afterlife to seek revenge on her father.

Accompanied by specially commissioned artwork by Aza Erdrich Abe—an intimate and revelatory creative collaboration between mother and daughter—these stories offer an oppor­tunity to celebrate the wisdom and brilliant, wide-ranging imagination of one of America’s most important writers.

Genres: Short Stories, Fiction, Literary Fiction, Indigenous, Short Story Collection, Native American

240 pages, Kindle Edition

Expected publication March 24, 2026

About the author

Karen Louise Erdrich is a American author of novels, poetry, and children's books. Her father is German American and mother is half Ojibwe and half French American. She is an enrolled member of the Anishinaabe nation (also known as Chippewa). She is widely acclaimed as one of the most significant Native writers of the second wave of what critic Kenneth Lincoln has called the Native American Renaissance.

For more information, please see http://www.answers.com/topic/louise-e...

From a book description:

Author Biography:

Louise Erdrich is one of the most gifted, prolific, and challenging of contemporary Native American novelists. Born in 1954 in Little Falls, Minnesota, she grew up mostly in Wahpeton, North Dakota, where her parents taught at Bureau of Indian Affairs schools. Her fiction reflects aspects of her mixed heritage: German through her father, and French and Ojibwa through her mother. She worked at various jobs, such as hoeing sugar beets, farm work, waitressing, short order cooking, lifeguarding, and construction work, before becoming a writer. She attended the Johns Hopkins creative writing program and received fellowships at the McDowell Colony and the Yaddo Colony. After she was named writer-in-residence at Dartmouth, she married professor Michael Dorris and raised several children, some of them adopted. She and Michael became a picture-book husband-and-wife writing team, though they wrote only one truly collaborative novel, The Crown of Columbus (1991).

The Antelope Wife was published in 1998, not long after her separation from Michael and his subsequent suicide. Some reviewers believed they saw in The Antelope Wife the anguish Erdrich must have felt as her marriage crumbled, but she has stated that she is unconscious of having mirrored any real-life events.

She is the author of four previous bestselling andaward-winning novels, including Love Medicine; The Beet Queen; Tracks; and The Bingo Palace. She also has written two collections of poetry, Jacklight, and Baptism of Desire. Her fiction has been honored by the National Book Critics Circle (1984) and The Los Angeles Times (1985), and has been translated into fourteen languages.

Several of her short stories have been selected for O. Henry awards and for inclusion in the annual Best American Short Story anthologies. The Blue Jay's Dance, a memoir of motherhood, was her first nonfiction work, and her children's book, Grandmother's Pigeon, has been published by Hyperion Press. She lives in Minnesota with her children, who help her run a small independent bookstore called The Birchbark.

Reviews

[Meg · Rating 5 out of 5]

our best living american writer tbh

[Book Riot Community]

Book Riot’s Most Anticipated Books of 2026:

If you've never read Louise Erdrich, I envy you the joy of discovery wherever you start in her extensive catalog. If you have read Louise Erdrich, you know that her signature blend of the sacred, the mundane, and the mythic is unlike anything else in contemporary fiction. Erdrich's stories are deeply human and real. Her writing is somehow both spare and lyrical. She's a master of her craft with a Pulitzer and National Book Award under her belt, and she routinely shows up as someday-contender for the Nobel Prize for Literature. Wherever she wants to take me, I’m ready to go. —Rebecca Joines Schinsky

[Britta · Rating 4 out of 5]

In this collection of short stories (some might be familiar as they're a compilation/reworking of works she has published in various literary publications), Louise Erdrich reminds me why she’s one of my very favorite authors. As in her other works, her characters feel like the folks you left behind in your small town. Her world-building is unlike any other author I've encountered, but there's a je na sa quois (did I spell the right??) about them that I just can't put my finger on. The worlds she creates feel familiar—like being reminded of a dream you'd had months or years before. This is quintessential Louise Erdrich, so you're sure to get everything you love about her from this book like I did. I'd still say LaRose or The Round House are my faves, but this was good.

Many center around the small fictional town of Tabor. In one, we follow a little girl as she watches her favorite uncle fall in love with a lady whose father is a formidable fighter. In another (my favorite) we ride along on a school bus as it rolls along lost on the prairie in a blizzard.

Most of the stories land just this side of magical realism (or maybe very very light sci-fi?) and I love them for it. Wonderful job, Louise Erdrich!

[Sara M. · Rating 5 out of 5]

I devoured this book, I read it so fast. Louise Erdrich is such a beautiful and emotional writer. I really enjoyed reading this book for the most part. It was like a grab-bag of different genres all rolled into one book - including some magical realism, sci-fi, and literary fiction.
I gave this book five stars because the short stories that I did like, I really liked. I had a hard time reading the first story in the book, there is a "sad animal" story line that really got to me. I know it wasn't really about the dog, but I didn't love reading it first thing in the book. Maybe I'm too sensitive though.
My very favorite stories were "Wedding Dresses" and "Amelia". I also thought "Assassins" was especially poignant considering the awful events happening in the Twin Cities right now (even though this story was written before any of it was happening). I don't want to give too much away though.
One of my best friends is a big Louise Erdrich fan and she will definitely be getting this book for her birthday this year! Overall, very thoughtfully put together and beautifully written book!

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

[Kim · Rating 4 out of 5]

I am a fan of Louise Erdrich's work, so I was excited to receive this ARC of short stories in Python's Kiss. Admittedly I knew little about it when I requested the ARC other than the author, so I went in with little expectation. At times, the stories seem disconnected from each other, but the descriptions available on other sites say they are held together by the in-between of life and death. I could see it, but it wouldn't be what jumped out at me. These are stories all having been published elsewhere in different forms. As with all short stories collections, some are stronger than others. Overall, however, I did enjoy the variety of characters, stories, and even genres. This is a good selection for people who have liked Erdrich's other stories or those who are looking to get into her writing for the first time. Thank you to Net Galley and the publishers for this ARC.

[Jifu · Rating 4 out of 5]

(Note: I read an advanced reader copy of this book courtesy of NetGalley)

Since Louis Erdrich is one of my favorite authors already, I confess that I was already a bit predisposed towards enjoying Python’s Kiss. But the fact that this is a short story collection really made this into something great. It’s a literary variety pack where Erdrich’s always-memorable writing covers an impressive range of plots, characters, and genres, leading to a fantastic array of different reading experiences wrapped up into one package.

[Erin · Rating 3 out of 5]

ARC for review. To be published March 24, 2026.

3 stars

Great title (it’s explained) for this collection of thirteen short stories by this redoubtable author. I did not love all the tales, I think Erdrich reads better as a novelist, but I did enjoy “Borsalino” and “December 26” quite a bit (the two related stories about the afterlife really unsettled me in a bad way that I can’t quite put my finger on.).

If you like Erdrich you’ll probably enjoy. If this is your first experience with her, better to start with one of her great novels.

[Andrew · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5 stars. There's no simple way to summarize Erdrich's short story collection-- her writing spans across time and genre. What I can guarantee for sure is that almost every story in Python's Kiss landed a gut punch that made me "oof" out loud from the emotional impact. What a spectacularly moving assortment that capture the moral and psychological complexities of being human.

[Andrea]

Reading for work, so not rating.

[Barbara · Rating 5 out of 5]

A great and varied collection of stories.