My first reading of Grim Tales was not so long ago nor hard to remember, although the book was then shaped differently, still in its first incarnation as an e-book at the great literary magazine elimae. At the time, I felt like I had been woken up from a dream only to stumble onto a secret body of knowledge, one so important and necessary that immediately I wanted to hoard it, despite knowing that to refuse to share something is eventually to diminish it, to reduce its power in the world. It was an obviously ridiculous urge anyway, since I was reading Grim Tales online, but knowing better didn’t stop me from being obsessed or from pretending I was the only one who knew about the book. I printed a copy of the manuscript so that I could carry it around in my bag, slid into the accordion file that contained my then-daily life: my students’ papers, the work of my classmates, and my own frustrating fictions. I would read that printout between classes, or while waiting in public places, knowing that what I was reading was different from what anyone else in the room was holding, maybe from anything else they had ever seen.
