LET ME EXPLAIN YOU

A "big, rollicking, tender novel with a truly original comic voice at its center" (George Saunders), Let Me Explain You is about a Greek American family and its patriarch-- part Zorba, part King Lear-- and announces the arrival of a significant new voice in contemporary literature.

Let Me Explain You begins with a letter: Stavros Stavros Mavrakis, Greek immigrant and proud owner of the Gala Diner in New Jersey, believes he has just ten days left to live. He sends a scathing email to his estranged ex-wife and three grown daughters, outlining his wishes for how they each might better their lives. He then prepares for his final hours and wonders why he is alone. With varying degrees of laughter and scorn, his family and friends have dismissed his behavior as nothing more than a predictable plea for attention, but when Stavros really does disappear, those closest to him are forced to confront the possibility of his death and the realities of their loss.

A vibrant tour de force told from multiple perspectives and driving to a surprising conclusion, Let Me Explain You eulogizes Stavros Stavros, turning in part on his realization that “a man spends his whole life trying to say it better," while giving necessary voice to the women in his life. This multigenerational novel explores our origins and family myths, reinvention and forgiveness, hunger and what feeds us. Let Me Explain You is a beautifully told, heartfelt story, and its meditations on the communal power of storytelling and family—most notably the relationship between fathers and daughters, but also the complex bond of sisterhood—are at turns hilarious and deeply moving.

Annie Liontas is the recent recipient of a grant from the Barbara Deming Memorial Fund to conduct research in Trinidad for her newest work BADEYE, which also received Honorary Mention in the 2013 Dana Awards. Annie will be attending the 2014 Disquiet International Literary Program in Lisbon, Portugal on an Editor's Choice Fellowship. Her story “Two Planes in Love” was selected as runner-up in BOMB Magazine’s 2013 Fiction Prize Contest and was published by BOMB in December. Other stories and poems have appeared in Ninth Letter, Night Train, and Lit. She graduated from Syracuse University’s MFA Program, where she was awarded the Creative Writing Department Fellowship and a 2013 Summer Fellowship. In 2003 and 2000 she received the Edna N. Herzberg Prize in Fiction at Rutgers University. Annie served as Editor-in-Chief of SALT HILL from 2012-2013. She co-hosts the TireFire Reading Series in Philly.