Edgartown Books is proud to sponsor this special event in collaboration with the Martha’s Vineyard Film Center. Please visit their website mvfilmsociety.com for tickets to the film. A discussion and book signing with the author will follow the film.
The History of Sound: Stories (Viking, 2024) was the winner of the 2025 Mark Twain American Voice in Literature Award and the Story Prize Spotlight Award and was shortlisted for the 2024 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction and the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction. His film adaptation of the title story premiered at the 2025 Cannes film festival.
More about the book:
Longlisted for the PEN/FAULKNER AWARD FOR FICTION & THE ANDREW CARNEGIE MEDAL FOR EXCELLENCE IN FICTION
CHICAGO TRIBUNE’S 10 BEST BOOKS OF 2024
BEST SHORT FICTION 2024, KIRKUS REVIEWS
ONE OF NPR’s “BOOKS WE LOVE”
“The History of Sound is polyphonic fiction. . . . It’s also a reminder of the short story’s power. . . . The History of Sound marks Shattuck as one of the form’s brightest lights.”
—Chris Vognar, The Boston Globe
“The unity of this collection is most pleasing of all, as each small, muted drama grows in pathos by being remembered or replicated later in time. Even the loneliest confessions find sympathetic listeners, though they may take centuries to do so.” —Sam Sacks, The Wall Street Journal
“Masterful. . . . Shattuck’s connection to the region he writes about is palpable on the page. The emotions evoked, primarily around the difficulty of finding meaningful connections to others, land with a combination of great force and quiet tenderness. . . . The History of Sound is worth your time.”
—John Warner, The Chicago Tribune
His first book, Six Walks: In the Footsteps of Henry David Thoreau (Tin House, 2022), was a New Yorker Best Book of 2022, a Wall Street Journal Best Book of Spring, a New York Times Best Book of Summer, a New England Bestseller, and was nominated for the Massachusetts Book Award.
Ben Shattuck is a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and winner of the PEN Short Story Prize for Emerging Writers and a Pushcart Prize. He lives with his wife and daughter on the coast of Massachusetts, where he owns and runs the oldest general store in America, built in 1793. He is also the founder and director of the Cuttyhunk Island Writers' Residency.