Hillary Behrman in conversation with Maria McLeod- Lake Effect

"A great short story is a glorious creature, sleek and sinuous, bearing very sharp teeth. A collection of them is redoubtable. . . . Hillary Berhman’s Lake Effect is exactly this kind of exhilarating and wild book." – Lauren Groff, author of The Vaster Wilds

From Seattle to Istanbul, Lake Effect, the debut short story collection by Hillary Behrman, takes you to unmapped mountain ridges, wild urban places, and the outskirts of a desert outpost—exploring the many ways we love, labor, and isolate ourselves from one another.

In these stories, characters are rarely headed where they want to be. Paula’s real and dream life become indistinguishable. Oliver can’t shed the hold of family lore as he negotiates his love affair with Daniel. Siblings Alex and Marcie are comforted and scraped raw by intimacy as they traverse the years—from juvenile vandalism to a labor and delivery gone terribly wrong. Miles searches for his mother in a homeless encampment beneath a maze of freeways. These stories exist at the intersection of social isolation and fierce intimacies and call into question the limits of our well-intentioned efforts to care for each other.

“The characters in Lake Effect are traveling unknown territories, both geographically and personally: they live between desire and understanding, and yearn to comprehend their relationships with others. Through an array of voices and places, Behrman asks us to be in conversation about what it means to exist in our world. Compassionate, original, and finely composed, these stories have a sense of adventure that makes the world seem larger. This collection has emotion, technical virtuosity, linguistic ferocity, and empathy. An outstanding debut.” – Nina McConigley, author of How to Commit a Postcolonial M**der

"From the gritty constraints of urban poverty to the ecstatic escape of the natural world, these stories take you on journeys that will transform and haunt you. Each character contains multitudes, each line is poetry, each scene feels as vital and meaningful as the most pivotal days of your own life. With enormous empathy and impeccable craftsmanship, Behrman probes the difficult lives of her characters and lays bare hard truths that others are afraid to utter. This masterful book is an essential addition to U.S. literature, and Hillary Behrman is a writer to watch.” – Valerie Laken, author of Dream House and Separate Kingdoms

Hillary Behrman’s award-winning short stories have been described as deeply humane and unsettling and have been published in journals, magazines, short story dispensers, and anthologies. Her debut collection Lake Effect (Sarabande) was selected by Lauren Groff as the winner of the Mary McCarthy Prize in Short Fiction. Hillary lives and writes in the Pacific Northwest where she raised two kids and worked as a children’s civil rights lawyer and public defender.

Hillary will be in conversation with:

Maria McLeod’s poetry and prose have been published by literary journals in the U.S., England, Germany, India, and Scotland. She’s won the Quarter after Eight Robert J. DeMott Short Prose Prize, the Indiana Review Poetry Prize, and has been nominated for "Best of the Net" and five Pushcart Prizes. Publications include “Skin. Hair. Bones.” and “Mother Want,” poetry chapbooks. She works as a journalism professor for Western Washington University. Find her on Instagram @mariapoempics.

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