Laguna, a collection of ten stories, explores working class issues that supernaturally mirror environmental disasters.

“Laguna”

Lily Peter Fellowship in Fiction, 2019

“‘Laguna’ is a held story--held in a quiet and deliberate but daring space. It's rhythms and diction won't rush us and yet something is ebbing, always ebbing in this piece. There is a drift of an island, but also one of loss and time. Such a story can sometime run itself out through metaphor or, conversely, can fall short of its images and themes. "Laguna" manages a great balancing act of story-world and our world's story (of departures and endings). It does this so gracefully, it's hard to remember lands don't drift off from us through great swells of grief and acceptance all the time. It's hard to remember and not worth doing so either when there is such a story.” — Natanya Pulley, judge

James T Whitehead Award in Fiction, 2019

“‘Laguna’ is a story built from impressionistic strokes, and meaningful details. It acquires depth and beauty as one moves forward, and showcases a writer who thinks carefully about language and rhythm and pacing. There’s admirable restraint here, both in the parsing of information and backstory and on the level of the sentence. This combination of style and content rivets us to a fictional television, on whose screen we see drama that not only evokes Brexit and global warming, but reflects the characters’ states of mind—and our own.” — Courtney Zoffness, judge

“Float”

Lily Peter Fellowship in Fiction, 2021

“‘Float’ tells a story of familial loss with understated tenderness. There is an element of magic here—a sister, a daughter, with holes in her chest—but there is also humor, and there is also pitch-perfect dialogue. Everything is rendered with a lightness of touch that makes a grief- and guilt-ridden story about the loss of a sibling nearly buoyant by the end, hopeful. I was so moved by the idea at its heart: that it might be possible to build a craft out of sorrow and use it to ferryothers away.” — Emily Fridlund, judge