The Goodbye Process

The Goodbye Process

Mary Jones

Coming July 30, 2024

 

What happens when you are forced to let go of the things you love the most? What are you left with?

 

Shop Online

 

Zibby's Bookshop Amazon Barnes & Noble Books A Million Bookshop.org

 

 

In her stunning debut short story collection, The Goodbye Process, Mary Jones uses her distinctive voice to examine the painful and sometimes surreal ways we say goodbye.

 

The stories—which range from tender and heartbreaking to unsettling and darkly funny—will push you out of your comfort zone and ignite intense emotions surrounding love and loss. A woman camps out on the porch of an ex-lover who has barricaded himself inside the house; a preteen girl caught shoplifting finds herself in grave danger; a Los Angeles real estate agent falls for a woman who helps him detach from years of dramatic plastic surgery; a man hires a professional mourner to ensure his wife’s funeral is a success. Again and again, Jones’s characters find themselves facing the ends of things: relationships, health, and innocence.


Arresting, original, and beautifully rendered, this story collection packs a punch, just the way grief does―knocking us off our feet.

The Goodbye Process

Short Stories

Mary Jones

Available in Bookstores Everywhere

Amazon
Barnes
Shop Online
Bookshop Amazon Barnes & Noble
shop zibby partner shops

Meet the author

Mary Jones

Mary Jones is the author of the short story collection THE GOODBYE PROCESS (forthcoming from Zibby Books). Her stories and essays have appeared in Electric Literature’s Recommended Reading, EPOCH, Alaska Quarterly Review, Columbia Journal, The Hopkins Review, Southwest Review, Gay Mag, Epiphany: A Literary Journal, Brevity and in many other literary magazines. The recipient of a summer prose fellowship from The University of Arizona Poetry Center, her work has been cited as notable in The Best American Essays and will appear in The Best Microfiction 2022. She holds an MFA from Bennington College and teaches fiction writing at UCLA Extension. Originally from Upstate New York, she lives in Los Angeles.

get to know Mary

What people are saying...

“Mary Jones builds enormous depth in direct clear sentences—over and over again, I found myself moved and wowed by how much she packed into a moment, how swiftly she could conjure a person. And she pulls us in, too—her words have these subtle magnets in them, drawing a reader close. Thrilling abundance here.”

Aimee Bender

author of The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake

"In these exquisite and emotionally distilled stories, Jones illuminates the mysterious corners of grief and grace with poignancy and spiky humor. While wholly original, Jones’s prose shares literary DNA with Mary Gaitskill, Aimee Bender, and Amy Hempel. Her explorations of sex, sorrow, and wonder are transfixing and brilliant. This is a must-read collection."

Mary Otis

author of Yes, Yes, Cherries and Burst

"Keenly felt and observed, always humane, the stories in Jones’s debut begin where all the best stories do: the end of one thing, the start of the next. The Goodbye Process introduces an arresting new voice."

Taylor Koekkoek

author of Thrillville, USA