Collections
| Title | Published | Buy on Amazon |
|---|---|---|
| We Show What We Have Learned and Other Stories | 2016 | Buy |
Short Stories/Novellas
| Title | Published | Buy on Amazon |
|---|---|---|
| The Saltwater Cure | 2013 | Buy |
| All the Keys to All the Doors | 2016 | Buy |
Standalone Novels
| Title | Published | Buy on Amazon |
|---|---|---|
| The Illness Lesson | 2020 | Buy |
| The Garden | 2024 | Buy |
Clare Beams is an American author of literary fiction whose work often blends realism with strange, unsettling undercurrents. Her debut short story collection, We Show What We Have Learned and Other Stories (2016), won the Bard Fiction Prize and was recognized as a Kirkus Best Debut. It was also longlisted for the Story Prize and named a finalist for the PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize and the Shirley Jackson Award.
Her first novel, The Illness Lesson (2020), is set at a 19th-century school for girls in Massachusetts where a mysterious illness spreads among the students. The book was named a New York Times Editors’ Choice and a best book of 2020 by Esquire and Bustle. Her second novel, The Garden (2024), is a gothic story set in a strange obstetrical clinic in late-1940s Massachusetts, following a woman who has suffered repeated miscarriages. Both novels share Beams’s interest in the ways institutions exert control over women’s bodies and minds.
Beams’s writing is marked by precise, atmospheric prose and a willingness to let the uncanny creep into otherwise realistic settings. Her short fiction, including The Saltwater Cure and All the Keys to All the Doors, explores similar territory on a smaller scale.