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    The Typing Lady

    And Other Fictions

    Author Ruth Ozeki
    Look inside
    Hardcover
    $31.00 US
    Penguin Adult HC/TR | Viking
    5.75"W x 8.54"H x 1.09"D   | 14 oz | 12 per carton
    On sale Jun 02, 2026 | 336 Pages | 9780593832714
    Add to cart Add to list Exam Copies

    A spellbinding story collection from Booker Prize finalist Ruth Ozeki, about the lives we almost lived, the people we can’t quite forget, and the stories that shape us long after the last page is turned

    In this spirited and emotionally resonant collection, award-winning novelist Ruth Ozeki turns her singular gaze to the short story, exploring childhood ambition, youthful desire, midlife reinvention, and the unsparing clarity of old age. With her distinctive blend of wit, warmth, and deep humanity, she brings us eleven richly imagined stories of characters standing at life’s thresholds—grappling with faded ideals, evolving identities, and the inevitable compromises that shape a life.

    A college student falls for her professor and learns to transmute longing into language. A disquieted husband watches with tenderness and unease as the ghost of his wife’s ambition roams the woods outside their home. A long-deceased Beat poet hijacks the mind of a young publishing assistant during a sales meeting, railing against the state of modern literature. A curious grandmother creates a fake online dating profile to spy on her granddaughter’s romantic life—and sets in motion a deception she can’t control.

    Spanning eras and geographies—from a New England college town in the 1970s to downtown Manhattan in the 1990s to a moss-covered Pacific Northwest island during the early pandemic—The Typing Lady is an electrifying meditation on the stories we tell ourselves, the stories we abandon, and the stories we become. Threaded with the tactile ephemera of writing—typewriters, letters, manuscripts, and disappearing ink—the book reveals how we record ourselves in language, and how language, over time, records us in return.
    A Time Most Anticipated Book of the Year

    “Delightful, moving, and profound, The Typing Lady is a book of love stories of every kind. It is a book of great treasures.”
    —Lily King, New York Times bestselling author of Heart the Lover

    “In 11 stories, the acclaimed Ruth Ozeki moves gracefully among characters, between decades and locales, skewering power dynamics in academia and the writer’s craft—‘collaborations between people who read and people who type‘—with mordant wit.”
    —Time, “The 36 Most Anticipated Books of 2026”

     “Longing and loss sometimes lead to understanding in this reflective collection of 11 short pieces. . . . [Ozeki shows] warmth toward the fiction-making process—and her characters. . . . Tender, mysterious, and moving.”
    —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

     “The act of writing—on keyboards, in letters, even with disappearing ink—connects Ozeki’s tales as bearing witness to lives lived and as records for readers now and to come.” —Booklist (starred review)
    “Ozeki’s atmospheric tales radiate with intelligence and wit.”
    —Publishers Weekly (starred review)
    Ruth Ozeki is a novelist, filmmaker, and Zen Buddhist priest. She is the bestselling author of four novels: The Book of Form and Emptiness, winner of the UK’s 2022 Women’s Prize for Fiction; My Year of Meats; All Over Creation; and A Tale for the Time Being, which won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and was a finalist for the 2013 Booker Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award. Her nonfiction work includes a memoir, The Face: A Time Code, and the documentary film Halving the Bones. A longtime Buddhist practitioner, Ruth is affiliated with the Everyday Zen Foundation. She is now professor emerita of English language and literature at Smith College, where she was the Grace Jarcho Ross 1933 Professor of Humanities. View titles by Ruth Ozeki

    About

    A spellbinding story collection from Booker Prize finalist Ruth Ozeki, about the lives we almost lived, the people we can’t quite forget, and the stories that shape us long after the last page is turned

    In this spirited and emotionally resonant collection, award-winning novelist Ruth Ozeki turns her singular gaze to the short story, exploring childhood ambition, youthful desire, midlife reinvention, and the unsparing clarity of old age. With her distinctive blend of wit, warmth, and deep humanity, she brings us eleven richly imagined stories of characters standing at life’s thresholds—grappling with faded ideals, evolving identities, and the inevitable compromises that shape a life.

    A college student falls for her professor and learns to transmute longing into language. A disquieted husband watches with tenderness and unease as the ghost of his wife’s ambition roams the woods outside their home. A long-deceased Beat poet hijacks the mind of a young publishing assistant during a sales meeting, railing against the state of modern literature. A curious grandmother creates a fake online dating profile to spy on her granddaughter’s romantic life—and sets in motion a deception she can’t control.

    Spanning eras and geographies—from a New England college town in the 1970s to downtown Manhattan in the 1990s to a moss-covered Pacific Northwest island during the early pandemic—The Typing Lady is an electrifying meditation on the stories we tell ourselves, the stories we abandon, and the stories we become. Threaded with the tactile ephemera of writing—typewriters, letters, manuscripts, and disappearing ink—the book reveals how we record ourselves in language, and how language, over time, records us in return.

    Praise

    A Time Most Anticipated Book of the Year

    “Delightful, moving, and profound, The Typing Lady is a book of love stories of every kind. It is a book of great treasures.”
    —Lily King, New York Times bestselling author of Heart the Lover

    “In 11 stories, the acclaimed Ruth Ozeki moves gracefully among characters, between decades and locales, skewering power dynamics in academia and the writer’s craft—‘collaborations between people who read and people who type‘—with mordant wit.”
    —Time, “The 36 Most Anticipated Books of 2026”

     “Longing and loss sometimes lead to understanding in this reflective collection of 11 short pieces. . . . [Ozeki shows] warmth toward the fiction-making process—and her characters. . . . Tender, mysterious, and moving.”
    —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

     “The act of writing—on keyboards, in letters, even with disappearing ink—connects Ozeki’s tales as bearing witness to lives lived and as records for readers now and to come.” —Booklist (starred review)
    “Ozeki’s atmospheric tales radiate with intelligence and wit.”
    —Publishers Weekly (starred review)

    Author

    Ruth Ozeki is a novelist, filmmaker, and Zen Buddhist priest. She is the bestselling author of four novels: The Book of Form and Emptiness, winner of the UK’s 2022 Women’s Prize for Fiction; My Year of Meats; All Over Creation; and A Tale for the Time Being, which won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and was a finalist for the 2013 Booker Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award. Her nonfiction work includes a memoir, The Face: A Time Code, and the documentary film Halving the Bones. A longtime Buddhist practitioner, Ruth is affiliated with the Everyday Zen Foundation. She is now professor emerita of English language and literature at Smith College, where she was the Grace Jarcho Ross 1933 Professor of Humanities. View titles by Ruth Ozeki

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