STORIES NO ONE HOPES ARE ABOUT THEM by A. J. Bermudez

About the Book:

At once playfully dark and slyly hopeful, Stories No One Hopes Are about Them explores convergences of power, privilege, and place. Characters who are ni de aquí, ni de allá—neither from here nor there—straddle competing worlds, disrupt paradigms, and transition from objects of other people’s stories to active subjects and protagonists of their own. Narratives of humanity and environment entwine with nuanced themes of colonization, queerness, and evolution at the forefront. Big things happen in this collection. But it’s also a collection of small intimacies: misremembered names, chipped teeth, and private rituals; unexpected alliances and barely touched knees beneath uniform skirts; minutiae of the natural world; incidents that quietly, achingly, and delightfully transgress the familiar.

About the Author:

A. J. Bermudez is an award-winning author and filmmaker based in New York and Los Angeles. Her first book, Stories No One Hopes Are About Them, won the 2022 Iowa Short Fiction Award and was a 2023 Lambda Award Finalist. Her most recent feature film project, My Dead Friend Zoe (co-written with director Kyle-Hausmann Stokes, starring Sonequa Martin-Green, Natalie Morales, Ed Harris, Morgan Freeman), premiered at SXSW and won the Narrative Spotlight Audience Award in 2024. She is also a recipient of the Page Award, the Diverse Voices Award, the Alpine Fellowship Writing Prize, the Pushcart Prize, and the Steinbeck Fellowship. Her work has received support from the Banff Centre, the Cultural Association of Morocco, the Bethany Arts Community, the Watermill Center, and the Montalvo Arts Center. Bermudez received her MFA from Boston University in 2023, and currently teaches in the MFA program at the University of Miami.

About the Moderator:

Katie Henken Robinson is Boston-based writer and the Associate Editor of Nonfiction at Electric Literature. Her writing has appeared in Grist, King Ludd’s Rag, Autofocus, Prism Review, and elsewhere. She is a graduate of Boston University’s fiction MFA and Johns Hopkins University’s undergraduate creative writing program and has attended Tin House Workshop and Lighthouse Writers Workshop.

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