**Featured by CHICAGO REVIEW OF BOOKS, one of "12 MUST-READ BOOKS OF SEPTEMBER 2025"AUTHOR OF AWARD-WINNING, ANIMAL WIFE**WINNER OF CAI EMMONS FICTION AWARD and ERIC HOFFER AWARDFOREWORD INDIE AWARD FINALIST"The poetic prose mixed with the intense subject matter creates an undertow that will pull readers in."—Booklist“A modern-day fairy tale that is both ghastly and beautiful....

In this award-winning debut collection, fifteen magical realism stories portray girls and women searching for an escape from their everyday lives."In villages where women bore most of the weight of a constricted life, witches flew by night on broomsticks," said Italo Calvino of the way imagination bridges the gap between everyday existence and an idealized alternative . . .The fifteen stories of Animal Wife are unified by girls and women who cross th...

The youngest siren sister, Ceto is weary of an existence driven by hunger, no better than a fish. She trades her tail for legs, marries the first man she meets, and bears a daughter—only to find domesticity as suffocating as the sea. Craving more, Ceto flees with her daughter Naia back to the ocean, where she reinvents herself as the star of a mermaid burlesque, performing in a lavish tank carved into the limestone cliffs above the waves.At Sirenland, Ceto's sensual performances an...

“In villages where women bore most of the weight of a constricted life, witches flew by night on broomsticks,” said Italo Calvino of the way imagination bridges the gap between everyday existence and an idealized alternative. The fifteen stories of Animal Wife are each about girls and women who cross this threshold seeking liberation from family responsibilities, from societal expectations, from their own minds. A girl born with feathers undertakes a quest for the mother who abandoned her....