Stacey Swann Books In Order

Publication Order of Standalone Novels

Stacey Swann is a literary fiction novelist who is best known for her debut novel “Olympus, Texas.”

The novel made the longlist for the First Novel Prize by the Center for Fiction and was an Indie Next Pick and a book club selection at Good Morning America.

Earlier on, she attended Texas State, where she earned her creative writing Master of Fine Arts before she proceeded to Stanford University, where she was a Stegner Fellow.

Her writing has since been featured in the likes of Epoch, Lithub, Texas Highways, and Electric Literature among several other journals. Her fiction has also been featured in the 2017 published “Bridport Prize Anthology.”
Given her past as a former Stegner Fellow, she is a tutor at the Novel Certificate Program at Stanford University. Stacey also works for American Short Fiction the literary journal as a contributing editor.

She currently spends much of her time between Lampasas and Austin from where she writes her works.

As for her very early beginnings, Stacey Swann has often asserted that she was an avid reader from when she was very young, as she desired to pursue a career as an author.

In her undergraduate years, she took one creative writing class but she never dared to share her work. While she was in her late twenties, she took two extension classes and finally got the courage to start applying to MFA programs.
While she was studying at Texas State University, she became part of his community and developed a belief in her work. It was this concentrated focus that accelerated her learning process, as she started prioritizing writing.
Stacey learned all about reworking and revising her work to make it progressively better, which she believes is the most important skill a writer needs to have.

Nonetheless, Swann believes that the biggest obstacle to getting published was that she never prioritized her time commitment as at the time she was involved in so many other things that were not so important.

Stacey Swann has often been asked what drew her toward setting her debut in Texas.

The good thing is that she lives in Texas and ever since she published her novel, she has had many conversations with her fellow Texans seeking to know what makes them love it so much.
Stacey thinks it could have something to do with the fact that there is so much diversity in the music, landscape, art, food, and the people of Texas.

On the other hand, Swann also feels that while there is so much diversity, there are some things that are very unique to its fiction that make it so attractive.

Even though the love of setting is not something that only authors from Texas have, she believes most Texan authors are likely to write novels in which place is deeply centered as compared to novelists from other states.
It is for this reason that many book covers from authors who call Texas their home often feature a huge sky under which is an empty landscape.
Swann believes that Texan authors rarely forget that there is something out there never entirely under their control as it is bigger than themselves.

While Stacey Swann’s debut novel was published in 2021, she had been doing creative writing for more than two decades.

Like many people, she found that combining earning a steady check with a creative passion was never easy. Nonetheless, she tried to mitigate that by focusing on career paths that helped her grow as an author.
In this regard, she worked for many years as a tutor in college teaching creative writing where she marked a ton of five-paragraph essays.

She has also worked for a literary journal as an editor and still freelances as an editor, revising all manner of novels and stories for clients, which helps her continue to grow in her craft.
It was in 2006 that she began writing “Olympus Texas” her debut and it would take fifteen years before she became a published author.

What she is most proud of is that despite many challenges, she never gave up on her desire to become a novelist or on her novel.

During that time, she never imagined that she would one day have her novel become a Good Morning America Book Club pick and have the editor and agent of her dreams.
Now that she has become a published author, there is nothing she loves better than reading from readers and fans who say they enjoy her story.

“Olympus, Texas” by Stacey Swann is a work that has often been called a modern perspective of the Greek gods of mythology.

If you know anything about the myths from Roman and Greek lore, you will most definitely pick up on some similarities. Nonetheless, this is a work that can also stand on its own merits, even if you never read or are a fan of mythology from the ancients.
This work is all about the Briscoe family that lives in Olympia, a small Texan town. The patriarch of the family is Peter, who is married to June with whom he has three children.

But the man is also a philanderer who is the father of three kids born out of wedlock. Given that they live in a very small town, they are all known to each other and talk from time to time.

At the opening of the novel, March who is the son of June and Peter is back home following a two-year self-imposed exile. He had left after it came out that he had been sleeping with Vera his brother’s wife.
The man is afflicted with intermittent explosive disorder and when he comes back he triggers all manner of resentments and long-held secrets that now boil over.

There are lies, fighting, jealousies, and more, ultimately resulting in a shocking and explosive event. Taking place over about a week, the rest of the work deals with the consequences of the tragedy.
While the family is deeply flawed, you find yourself rooting for them as the author makes them very sympathetic.