Skinny Dipping in the Lake of the Dead is Minneapolis-based poet and writer A. DeNiro's wide-ranging and assured debut fiction collection. DeNiro's stories have been published in the most forward-looking magazines includingFence, Crowd, One Story, Strange Horizons,and3rd Bed. These stories skitter sideways across literary and genre fiction categories, using the toolbox of genres like science fiction and fantasy to grapple with issues of identity, family, gender, and politics. DeNiro is frequently funny, surreal, or slapstick, but these stories also connect with readers on an emotional level, in unexpected and surprising ways. Even in the oddest of DeNiro's stories, characters are real people grappling with real relationships, real heartbreaks, the small, cruel, pinprick absurdities of a universe which is larger and stranger than most writers ever realize. A MAN LOSES his leg in a war, and a field doctor sews on a fairy tale in its place. A woman excavates her living room in order to discover what has become of her marriage. The Byzantine army invades a small college town. Giants move in next door. A boy in a town called Suddenly falls in love with a girl who lives in the Lake of the Dead. The secret history of Erie -- past, present, and future -- is revealed.