Rachel M Harper recommends
Big Bad (2021)
Whitney Collins
"To say that Whitney Collins has a unique voice is to make an understatement of massive proportions. Not only is she willing to go where other writers wouldn’t even consider going, she seems to revel in the opportunity to bring us along for the ride-and how thankful we are that she does. To read her collection of sixteen stories, Big Bad, is to spend time with one of our most exciting new talents, a writer speaking to so many of the challenges of modern life: how to have healthy relationships, how to love after loss, how to forgive ourselves for crimes real and imagined, and how to envision a world-or a life for oneself-that does not yet exist. Each story holds a universe within it: humor that will make you laugh out loud; characters who will make you cry; lines that demand to be memorized. This collection creates a fictional landscape as meaningful as any imagined space I’ve dared to enter-one so real, so unflinchingly honest, I didn’t realize I’d been transported, one so fascinating I didn’t want to leave."
Zero Zone (2020)
Scott O'Connor
"Scott O’Connor’s new novel is a tour de force, an elegy to a lost time and forgotten city - the Los Angeles of the 1970s - which burns with artistic longing and cultural politics that are just as relevant and necessary today. With an innovative structure and a cast of dynamic characters, Zero Zone takes you on a journey that makes the world disappear while opening a new space, a possibility beyond what I thought of. O'Connor will make you feel like a time traveler: you won’t want to go back home; you won’t want this wonderful book to end."
