If I'd Known You Were Coming (Iowa Short Fiction Award) - Softcover

Kate Milliken’s stories have appeared in Zyzzyva, Fiction, New Orleans Review, and Santa Monica Review, among others. A graduate of the Bennington College Writing Seminars, the recipient of fellowships from the Vermont Studio Center, the Tin House Summer Writer's Workshop, and several Pushcart Prize nominations, Kate has also written for television and commercial advertising. She currently teaches on behalf of the UCLA Extension Writers’ Program and lives in Mill Valley, California, with her family.

"The startling, darkly beautiful stories of Kate Milliken will make you uncomfortable, disquieted, suspicious, even weirdly aroused—and you will be left with the realization you don't know everyone you thought you knew, the equivalent of a camera pressed through the bedroom blinds of the couple next door. She never flinches, but you will."—Benjamin Percy, author, Red Moon

“Kate Milliken's stories burn straight to the darkest places in our hearts, speaking aloud the thoughts we hardly dare to call our own. In twelve flawless pieces, Milliken expertly illuminates the aftermath of abandonment; her characters, cast adrift, find themselves painfully alone, futilely seeking what was torn away long ago. Milliken writes with merciless precision about women and men, about the old and the young, about the betrayers and betrayed. You will stay up all night to learn the fates of these people, who will become as real to you as anyone you know.”—Julie Orringer

“These twelve marvelous stories expose the tenacity of blood memory: tender, accusatory, sometimes off course. Here, the aftermath of abandonment is replete with risk, sensuality, and truth; loss and replacement repeat in endless cycles, both vital and sorrowful. In these brilliantly wise, emotionally haunting stories, Kate Milliken reminds us how wildness can overtake the most mundane circumstance, how the quietest inclination toward loyalty or betrayal can alter, even determine, fate.”—Melissa Pritchard, author, Spirit Seizures

"Subtle and suspenseful stories filled with the kind of precise and original detail that portrays all the complexity of our lives."—Sheila Kohler, author, The Bay of Foxes

"The most interesting and satisfying thing about Milliken’s debut collection is the ingenious way the 12 stories fit together. Though each selection stands alone, several characters reappear throughout in different contexts. . . . The whole is greater than the sum of the already pretty impressive parts."—Publishers Weekly

“These twelve elegant, edgy, and deftly made stories are full of ravenous women, hungry for money, attention, fame—sometimes even fame by proxy—and sometimes even food. Highly compelling and a little bit terrifying, If I'd Known You Were Coming is a terrific debut.”—Pam Houston, author, Contents May Have Shifted