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With Teeth
Fiction. Native American Studies. Women's Studies. Experimenting with voice, form, and genre, Natanya Ann Pulley crafts a chorus of women voices who are in the process of reclaiming and telling their own stories as they slip through the cracks of our spacial and temporal reality. This collection explores how we tell stories, personally and collectively as a society, as we become stories ourselves. Through turns haunting, playful, tragic, and comedic, Pulley crafts a fever-dream surreal collection that will linger with you long after you finish reading.
"You're going to find your new favorite story in here. I know I just did."--Stephen Graham Jones
"These stories burrow into the hidden places where loss, fear and love are tangled together. WITH TEETH goes deep. It is as relentless as it is generous, as heartbreaking as it is beautiful."--Ramona Ausubel
"Natanya Pulley's WITH TEETH is an astonishing collection by a darkly-gorgeous storyteller. Pulley weaves a haunting web of psychologically riveting and disturbing narratives in language that shimmers in the light, fattening up the reader with the witchy magic of incantation and song, before binding us--in all of our animal innocence and human frailty--into an intricate knotwork that leaves us whimpering for a safeword. Part creation myth, part surreal horror story, part smart parable of the consumption and commodification of vulnerable bodies, WITH TEETH, in all of its wry humor, shapeshifting, and haunting violence, heralds the debut of a remarkable and endlessly-imaginative voice. Dear Reader: once bitten, you will be forever transformed."--Lee Ann Roripaugh
"You're going to find your new favorite story in here. I know I just did."--Stephen Graham Jones
"These stories burrow into the hidden places where loss, fear and love are tangled together. WITH TEETH goes deep. It is as relentless as it is generous, as heartbreaking as it is beautiful."--Ramona Ausubel
"Natanya Pulley's WITH TEETH is an astonishing collection by a darkly-gorgeous storyteller. Pulley weaves a haunting web of psychologically riveting and disturbing narratives in language that shimmers in the light, fattening up the reader with the witchy magic of incantation and song, before binding us--in all of our animal innocence and human frailty--into an intricate knotwork that leaves us whimpering for a safeword. Part creation myth, part surreal horror story, part smart parable of the consumption and commodification of vulnerable bodies, WITH TEETH, in all of its wry humor, shapeshifting, and haunting violence, heralds the debut of a remarkable and endlessly-imaginative voice. Dear Reader: once bitten, you will be forever transformed."--Lee Ann Roripaugh
- GenresShort Stories
140 pages, Paperback
Published October 1, 2019
2 people are currently reading
104 people want to read
About the author
Natanya Ann Pulley
8 books5 followersNatanya Ann Pulley is a Diné writer of fiction and non-fiction. Her clans are Kinyaa’áani (Towering House People) and Táchii’nii (Red Running into the Water People). She’s published work in numerous journals including Split Lip, The Collagist, The Offing, Waxwing, and As/Us. Her essays have been anthologized in #NotYourPrincess: Voices of Native American Women, Creating a Compass: Essays for New Creative Writing Teachers, Women Write Resistance, and more. A former editor of Quarterly West and South Dakota Review, she is the founding editor of Hairstreak Butterfly Review. Natanya is an assistant professor of English at Colorado College where she teaches texts by Native American writers, Fiction Writing, and Experimental Forms in Ethnic Literature. Her short story collection With Teeth will be published Fall 2019 by New Rivers Press as a 2018 Many Voices Project winner.
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Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews
November 15, 2019
The title is apt, because these stories have some serious teeth. They have their own way of telling themselves, but they can make the reader listen. Compelling, unusual, and unsettling at the same time that they satisfy. Excellent stories.
January 24, 2020
Unlike our world, Pulley's fictional universe(s) are not indifferent. In her stories the powerful are punished for their violences, and the "vulnerable"--animals, children, women--are gifted powers that honor their trauma and relieve them of the burden of victimhood.
In writing the monstrous and the magical, Pulley breaks from the mimetic in order to show us the ways in which the universe can be just. That our interconnection to each other and everything around us means we are all responsible for each other and everything around us. Time and again Pulley shows us how the neglect of this responsibility leads to disaster, but also how violence may be absorbed and turned into energy. There's an alchemic morality in her work that I truly take to heart as a reader in these times.
In writing the monstrous and the magical, Pulley breaks from the mimetic in order to show us the ways in which the universe can be just. That our interconnection to each other and everything around us means we are all responsible for each other and everything around us. Time and again Pulley shows us how the neglect of this responsibility leads to disaster, but also how violence may be absorbed and turned into energy. There's an alchemic morality in her work that I truly take to heart as a reader in these times.
December 10, 2023
I would give this book a 6/5 if it was possible. Every single story is a universe I wanted to explore, a universe I am thankful I got to engage with. The stories in this book are novel and frightening in their ability to represent the realities we–as a society and individuals–try so hard to ignore. I have struggled to find stories that feel new–not retellings or reiterations that add nothing to the source material–and this book has it. It shines with the beauty of originality. Special mention to Cannibal and Did You Find Your Killer Yet?
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February 12, 2020With Teeth by Natanya Ann Pulley is a fiction novel collected of fourteen short stories and a prologue and epilogue that ties the book together as a whole. Each story enters into a different level of horror with different worlds, but the main focus still stands that the real horror in life is humans themselves.
The book tells of everyday fears and the people who follow through with them. Pulley is able to create a twisted world where the horrors we see like cannibalism, murder/man-slaughter, sex addition and so on become surreal. A lot of the horror genre is based around creatures, paranormal and slashers nowadays. But Pulley uses speculative fiction to create the worst horror. Everything is taken from our own world, but changed slightly to show that our own selves aren’t too far off from the ones in these books.
Critically her writing comes off as choppy. Often it’ll throw you off your rhythm while reading, going back to read sentences. But that is a benefit to her stories. If her sentences weren’t as clipped as they were, much of the detail and uniqueness of her imagination would be missed. There are times though where it seems that she gets so far into her own imagination that not everything she writes makes sense to the overall story. The line between reality and fiction blur in her stories. The main characters sometimes get so far into their own brains that the reader can’t tell what is real and what isn’t. Possibly again Pulley is doing this on purpose to make the reader see the obsessive nature of humans and how much havoc it wreaks on the world. This sort of writing can be hard to follow if the reader isn’t ready to sit down and enter the horror.
People should go into With Teeth wanting to consume the stories the same way the characters in the novel want to consume pride, lust and fear. It is like no other novel I have come across. It grasps concepts that are modern and will be modern for ages to come.
The book tells of everyday fears and the people who follow through with them. Pulley is able to create a twisted world where the horrors we see like cannibalism, murder/man-slaughter, sex addition and so on become surreal. A lot of the horror genre is based around creatures, paranormal and slashers nowadays. But Pulley uses speculative fiction to create the worst horror. Everything is taken from our own world, but changed slightly to show that our own selves aren’t too far off from the ones in these books.
Critically her writing comes off as choppy. Often it’ll throw you off your rhythm while reading, going back to read sentences. But that is a benefit to her stories. If her sentences weren’t as clipped as they were, much of the detail and uniqueness of her imagination would be missed. There are times though where it seems that she gets so far into her own imagination that not everything she writes makes sense to the overall story. The line between reality and fiction blur in her stories. The main characters sometimes get so far into their own brains that the reader can’t tell what is real and what isn’t. Possibly again Pulley is doing this on purpose to make the reader see the obsessive nature of humans and how much havoc it wreaks on the world. This sort of writing can be hard to follow if the reader isn’t ready to sit down and enter the horror.
People should go into With Teeth wanting to consume the stories the same way the characters in the novel want to consume pride, lust and fear. It is like no other novel I have come across. It grasps concepts that are modern and will be modern for ages to come.
January 24, 2020
“No, we are an emptiness and when we feel a hole, it is only because we came across something solid for a brief moment and thought we were solid too. The lies he told himself about what is solid. The delusions he had of ground.”
This excerpt, taken from Natanya Ann Pulley’s second story in her remarkable collection, encompasses some overarching themes of this literary work: Hunger, obsession, and the lust that leads us to commit acts of passion—often horrific ones.
WITH TEETH will make you laugh, ponder, cringe, and bare your canines. Each story sparks a different conversation about what drives people to do the things that they do. Some sections of the book are highly politicized, drawing connections to societal occurrences through the use of surrealism and absurdism. Others are melodramatic, playing on everyday fears and intimate struggles between lovers, friends, and family.
The style of the writing alone is fascinating, often charging readers with choppy sentences full of flavorful, colorful language. The boundaries between real spaces and figurative spaces blur, forcing readers to abandon the urge to build a concrete sense of the story world and to instead let the ideas she presents inhabit an abstract reality. Because of this, the examples of speculative fiction in this collection can be read as realistic fiction, and (in one specific case) a depiction of a narrator being eaten alive can be read as a bad dream.
These stories are unlike anything I’ve read before, in both style and content. The experimental formal structures help support the political and emotional themes she presents. This is my favorite short story collection of all time, and one of my favorite works of fiction.
This excerpt, taken from Natanya Ann Pulley’s second story in her remarkable collection, encompasses some overarching themes of this literary work: Hunger, obsession, and the lust that leads us to commit acts of passion—often horrific ones.
WITH TEETH will make you laugh, ponder, cringe, and bare your canines. Each story sparks a different conversation about what drives people to do the things that they do. Some sections of the book are highly politicized, drawing connections to societal occurrences through the use of surrealism and absurdism. Others are melodramatic, playing on everyday fears and intimate struggles between lovers, friends, and family.
The style of the writing alone is fascinating, often charging readers with choppy sentences full of flavorful, colorful language. The boundaries between real spaces and figurative spaces blur, forcing readers to abandon the urge to build a concrete sense of the story world and to instead let the ideas she presents inhabit an abstract reality. Because of this, the examples of speculative fiction in this collection can be read as realistic fiction, and (in one specific case) a depiction of a narrator being eaten alive can be read as a bad dream.
These stories are unlike anything I’ve read before, in both style and content. The experimental formal structures help support the political and emotional themes she presents. This is my favorite short story collection of all time, and one of my favorite works of fiction.
February 20, 2020
The book With Teeth by Natanya Ann Pulley is a collection of short stories with dark and abnormal themes. I have always been a fan of strange and twisted stories so I had figured I would enjoy my time reading With Teeth; however, I struggled to keep reading after the prologue. Though there were some stories that I enjoyed, such as “Did You Find Your Killer Yet?” and “By The Contents of Her,” I had to force myself to get through the other stories.
Though the themes of the stories were interesting, the writing seemed messy and incoherent at points. Unlike other short stories I have read, there was no introduction of characters. Even after reading through a story twice I was left confused by the viewpoint and plotline at the end. The writing style led to some confusion among what was occurring in each story. This felt the most prevalent while reading “Heavyweight in Training.” I noticed that the stories felt even more rushed than the average short story.
Though I had problems with most of the stories, I enjoyed the unique perspectives that came along with reading With Teeth due to the nature of the content. You can’t find the perspectives given in “Cannibal” or “Did You Find Your Killer Yet” in a lot of traditional collections of short stories.
With Teeth by Natanya Ann Pulley is a very unique collection of short stories with a beautiful cover and a few beautiful stories included inside. Despite the issues I faced while reading this story, I acknowledge that the stories included are all artistic works that have been shared with the world. The reading style doesn’t fit with my personal reading style, but other people may find it to be an interesting read.
Though the themes of the stories were interesting, the writing seemed messy and incoherent at points. Unlike other short stories I have read, there was no introduction of characters. Even after reading through a story twice I was left confused by the viewpoint and plotline at the end. The writing style led to some confusion among what was occurring in each story. This felt the most prevalent while reading “Heavyweight in Training.” I noticed that the stories felt even more rushed than the average short story.
Though I had problems with most of the stories, I enjoyed the unique perspectives that came along with reading With Teeth due to the nature of the content. You can’t find the perspectives given in “Cannibal” or “Did You Find Your Killer Yet” in a lot of traditional collections of short stories.
With Teeth by Natanya Ann Pulley is a very unique collection of short stories with a beautiful cover and a few beautiful stories included inside. Despite the issues I faced while reading this story, I acknowledge that the stories included are all artistic works that have been shared with the world. The reading style doesn’t fit with my personal reading style, but other people may find it to be an interesting read.
March 11, 2021
With Teeth by Natanya Ann Pulley is a collection of short stories with dark themes including toxic love, loss, and missing and murdered indegenious women. In some stories, this is tackled and communicated well, like in “Did You Find Your Killer Yet?”
With most of the other stories, I had to force myself to finish them. Several I read, and reread in an attempt to understand what was going on. The experimental writing style can be rewarding, but with its shifting perspectives I found many stories confusing and hard to follow. I told myself that maybe I was too tired while reading some stories, and reread the next day and still couldn’t make sense of it. There’s little information about the characters, and while I understand that sometimes that’s just life, you don’t get to know, it feels sloppy in this sense.
Overall, I think a lot of these stories feel rushed, as if the author was just trying to meet a deadline or a word count. There are lovely turns of phrase, but I found a lot of the text exhausting to read. When I have to go back and reread stories several times, maybe that means I just don’t get it. I love wanting to reread in order to find more bits and pieces I may not have picked up on the first time around. In that case, these little details add to the story, and I’m not rereading just to make sense of it. I can’t say I didn’t get what I asked for, as the summary does describe the book as fever-dream surreal.
With most of the other stories, I had to force myself to finish them. Several I read, and reread in an attempt to understand what was going on. The experimental writing style can be rewarding, but with its shifting perspectives I found many stories confusing and hard to follow. I told myself that maybe I was too tired while reading some stories, and reread the next day and still couldn’t make sense of it. There’s little information about the characters, and while I understand that sometimes that’s just life, you don’t get to know, it feels sloppy in this sense.
Overall, I think a lot of these stories feel rushed, as if the author was just trying to meet a deadline or a word count. There are lovely turns of phrase, but I found a lot of the text exhausting to read. When I have to go back and reread stories several times, maybe that means I just don’t get it. I love wanting to reread in order to find more bits and pieces I may not have picked up on the first time around. In that case, these little details add to the story, and I’m not rereading just to make sense of it. I can’t say I didn’t get what I asked for, as the summary does describe the book as fever-dream surreal.
October 27, 2025
With Teeth by Natanya Ann Pulley is a hauntingly lyrical and genre-bending collection that challenges not only how we tell stories but what it means to become one. Through a chorus of women's voices that shift across time, myth, and memory, Pulley constructs a landscape where trauma, identity, and resilience coexist in surreal harmony.
Each story in With Teeth vibrates with unapologetic energy and emotional depth. The narratives are fierce, dreamlike, and unflinchingly honest steeped in Native identity, womanhood, and the sacred act of storytelling itself. Pulley doesn’t just write about survival; she dissects it, reshapes it, and offers it back as something both broken and transcendent.
Her prose possesses the rhythm of incantation poetic yet razor-sharp and the effect is mesmerizing. The collection is not only a literary triumph but a reclamation of voice: women’s voices, Indigenous voices, the voices of the silenced and unseen.
With Teeth is a work of art that lingers long after the final page unsettling, dazzling, and alive. It’s a testament to the transformative power of story and to an author whose craft defies convention with fearless grace.
Each story in With Teeth vibrates with unapologetic energy and emotional depth. The narratives are fierce, dreamlike, and unflinchingly honest steeped in Native identity, womanhood, and the sacred act of storytelling itself. Pulley doesn’t just write about survival; she dissects it, reshapes it, and offers it back as something both broken and transcendent.
Her prose possesses the rhythm of incantation poetic yet razor-sharp and the effect is mesmerizing. The collection is not only a literary triumph but a reclamation of voice: women’s voices, Indigenous voices, the voices of the silenced and unseen.
With Teeth is a work of art that lingers long after the final page unsettling, dazzling, and alive. It’s a testament to the transformative power of story and to an author whose craft defies convention with fearless grace.
October 11, 2020
I was not a big fan of this short story collection. While there were definitely aspects of the writing that I appreciated, and I understood what Pulley was trying to do in several of the stories, I think the collection falls short of its goals, and this is evident in the reader's experience. There is a style available to short story writers in which they avoid a linear plot, forcing the reader to work out what is going on through glimpses of sense experience and heavy imagery. Pulley seems to be trying to go for this style, avoiding giving the reader anything too clear so that they have to work out the meaning through their emotional perception. In my opinion, this fell flat. There was so little straightforward description that it was a little exhausting to read. I found myself zoning out and needing to reread sections, trying to understand what it was that was happening. There are some lovely phrases, and the style is powerful: unfortunately, not enough attention was given to the reader's experience of the plot and the communication of meaning.
April 7, 2020
Pulley has the most wonderful turns of phrase--like, it got to the point I had to go get the sticky notes so I could save them and come back to them. Things like "not a break, but a collapse of the thought of bone" and "she, too dumb a thing to think the world had moments for her."
If I had to choose a favorite story from the collection--a diamond among gems--it's definitely "Did You Find Your Killer Yet?" The repetition/insistence on "stuff of nightmares"/"nightmare of the world" and the staidness the phrases take on when they become rote, performed, the assumed narrative that marches onward, is chilling.
If I had to choose a favorite story from the collection--a diamond among gems--it's definitely "Did You Find Your Killer Yet?" The repetition/insistence on "stuff of nightmares"/"nightmare of the world" and the staidness the phrases take on when they become rote, performed, the assumed narrative that marches onward, is chilling.
October 31, 2021
Surreal, gripping, exciting, sharp. I really enjoyed this collection and would read more by the author in a heartbeat.
(disclosure note: we used to work at the same place and I've met her, though I don't know that she would remember me! but we have former students in common.)
CN: myriad kinds of violence and abuse, never gratuitous but often quite graphic. murder, death, grief, hospitals. sexualized depersonalization, sexual assault, kink and BDSM. varying consent/nonconsent levels.
(disclosure note: we used to work at the same place and I've met her, though I don't know that she would remember me! but we have former students in common.)
CN: myriad kinds of violence and abuse, never gratuitous but often quite graphic. murder, death, grief, hospitals. sexualized depersonalization, sexual assault, kink and BDSM. varying consent/nonconsent levels.
January 10, 2020
Natanya Ann Pulley's With Teeth limns the liminal; dissolves the so-called borders between humans and so-called others: other animals, ghosts, etc.; imaginatively reanimates genres: fable, ghost story, mystery, science fiction; each luminous story giving marvelously new and strange meaning to "like pulling teeth."
March 7, 2020
This book is weird and cool and deep in all the right ways. It takes what's difficult, both in language and content, and lets it simmer with all the other emotions. At the same time, the emotions aren't where I expect them to be, as if the writer has placed them all in clear view, to the side of the boxes we think they fit in. Super book!
December 24, 2019
A fantastic collection. Every story in here is confrontational and poetic, and the darkness that pervades everything is sharp. But there's a heart to it. I was constantly like, "this is my favorite story," and then I'd get to the next one and be like "no wait, THIS is my favorite."
Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews