Exit Zero: Stories

by Marie-Helene Bertino

Twelve delightfully strange, haunting stories from the acclaimed, oracular author of Beautyland . Death-shaped entities--with all of their humor and strangeness-- haunt the twelve stories in Exit Zero . Vampires, ghost girls, fathers, blank spaces, day-old peaches, and famous paintings all pierce through their world into ours, reminding us to pay attention! and look alive! and offering many other flashes of wisdom from the oracle and author of Beautyland , Marie-Helene Bertino.

Unknown Binding

About the author

Marie-Helene Bertino was born and raised in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. She is the author of three novels and two short story collections—most recently, Exit Zero, Electric Literature‘s #1 collection of 2025. Her novel Beautyland was an American Book Award winner, a National Book Critics Circle Finalist, a New York Times Notable 100 and Time Magazine Top 10 Book of 2024. Bertino is the recipient of two O. Henry Prizes, the Pushcart Prize, and the Frank O’Connor International Short Story Fellowship in Cork, Ireland. She is a 2025 Guggenheim Fellow in Fiction and has taught in the Creative Writing programs of NYU, The New School, and Institute for American Indian Arts. She currently teaches in the Creative Writing Department at Yale University, where she is the Ritvo-Slifka Writer-in-Residence. More info: www.mariehelenebertino.com