Karen E. Bender (RJFWA ’97), The Words of Dr. L: And Other Stories, Counterpoint, May 2025

“National Book Award finalist Karen E. Bender returns with stunning speculative stories of parents and children, together and apart, surviving near-future dystopias that feel all-too-possible—and realities that can be even stranger. A young woman seeks to learn the magical words that can terminate her unwanted pregnancy. A mother discovers an extra child in her home she had forgotten about. A couple is separated from their son and encased in globes orbiting the Earth. Society develops a terrible plan to leave the burning planet for a life on Mars. Each story honors the emotional force of its situation by grappling with themes of freedom, self-definition, youth, aging, control, and power. Using settings both familiar and fantastic, Bender’s work explores the ordinary in the extraordinary to discover secret, hidden truths in the lifelong connection between parents and their children.”

Lydi Conklin (RJFWA ’18), Songs of No Provenance, Catapult, June 2025

“A suspenseful, wildly engaging debut novel by the award-winning author of Rainbow Rainbow, following a musician spiraling in self-doubt and self-searching after a night—and a relationship—gone wrong. Songs of No Provenance tells the story of Joan Vole, an indie folk singer forever teetering on the edge of fame, who flees New York after committing a shocking sexual act onstage that she fears will doom her career. Joan seeks refuge at a writing camp for teenagers in rural Virginia, where she’s forced to question her own toxic relationship to artmaking—and her complicated history with a friend and mentee—while finding new hope in her students and a deepening intimacy with a nonbinary artist and fellow camp staff member. A propulsive character study of a flawed and fascinating artist, Songs of No Provenance explores issues of trans nonbinary identity, queer baiting and appropriation, kink, fame hunger, secrecy and survival, and the question of whether a work of art can exist separately from its artist.”

Julia Elliott (RJFWA ’12), Hellions, Tin House Books, April 2025

“From the acclaimed author of The Wilds comes an electric story collection that blends folklore, fairy tales, Southern Gothic, and horror, reveling in the collision of the familiar with the wildly surreal. In a plague-stricken medieval convent, a nun works on a forbidden mystic manuscript. In rural South Carolina, an alligator named Dragon becomes a beloved pet for a precocious, tough-talking twelve-year-old. During a long, muggy July, an adolescent girl finds unexpected power as her family obsesses over the horror film The Exorcist. On the outskirts of a Southern college town, a young woman resists the tyranny of a shape-shifting older professor as she develops her own sorceress skills. And at a feminist art colony in the North Carolina mountains, a group of mothers contends with the supernatural talents their children have picked up from a pair of mysterious orphans who live in the woods. With exuberance, ferocity, and astounding imagination, Julia Elliott’s Hellions jumps from the occult to the comic, from the horrific to the wondrous, in eleven stories of earthbound characters who long for the otherworldly.”

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