David McGlynn
Liberal Arts
(TriQuarterly, October 2026)

A kaleidoscopic novel-in-stories set at a fictional Midwest college

Two centuries old and covered in ivy, Wisconsin’s Buchanan College is populated by an eclectic mix of students, staff, and professors hailing from the nearby suburbs to the far corners of the globe. From the outside, Buchanan seems an idyllic world of higher learning. Yet behind its bucolic exterior, a series of interconnected dramas play out: a slew of first-year students mysteriously disappear within days of moving in; an injured hockey star discovers an unlikely fountain of youth; an alumna returns to campus after fifty years in the hope of reconnecting with a former love. And throughout the novel we follow the story of Jenny Ramirez, a social worker and the wife of a popular professor, who commits an act that alters how the college sees her, and how she sees herself. Over a span of four years, from orientation to graduation, the characters in Liberal Arts are forced to weigh their ideals and aspirations against the harsh and often ridiculous realities of the world, and are left asking what, if anything, a liberal arts education has left to teach them.

Praise for Liberal Arts

“In its parts and as a whole, Liberal Arts is fantastic: a beautifully written and suspenseful fiction that tracks its characters to unexpected places. Extremely funny, often harrowing, and full of surprises, it invites us to connect with people who’ve lost or risk losing status or identity. David McGlynn is a masterful writer. This is life in a college town in all its comedy, awkwardness, outright terror, and—sometimes— joy.  It belongs with the best of our campus fictions, using a small place to show us something big. A book of entanglements you can’t look away from.” — Sarah Braunstein, author of Bad Animals

David McGlynn is the author of the novel Everything We Could Do, the story collection The End of the Straight and Narrow, and the memoirs A Door in the Ocean and One Day You’ll Thank Me. His work has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The American Scholar, and has been reviewed on National Public Radio’s Fresh Air. He teaches at Lawrence University and lives in Madison, Wisconsin.