“Pearson bursts onto the scene with a gripping murder mystery fueled by the craziness of the internet.” -DebutifulDays after the dawn of the new millennium, beautiful, charismatic nineteen-year-old Karlie Richards is found brutally murdered in her campus apartment. Two decades later, her freshman-year roommate Joy, mid-divorce and desperate for a new beginning, stumbles on an old letter from Karlie and becomes convinced the man in prison for her murder did...

"Exquisite writer" (Julia Phillips), psychiatrist, and conjurer of the uncanny Joanna Pearson returns to the short story with virtuosic intensity, insight, and intimacy.The stories in More Happy Love speak to the many faces of mid-life's quiet revolt. A psychiatrist meets her late husband's harshest critic, torn between insatiable lust and vengeance. A timid mother realizes that to save her daughter she must terrorize her. An audiologist begins discovering...

This is the seminannual Able Muse Review (Print Edition) - Winter 2018 issue, Number 26. This issue continues the tradition of masterfully crafted poetry, fiction, essays, art & photography, and book reviews that have become synonymous with the Able Muse-online and in print. After more than a decade of online publishing excellence, Able Muse print edition maintains the superlative standard of the work presented all these years in the online edition, and, the Able Muse Anthology (Able Muse ...

The Summer 2025 Issue. Ploughshares is an award-winning journal of new writing. Since 1971, Ploughshares has discovered and cultivated the freshest voices in contemporary American literature, and now provides readers with thoughtful and entertaining literature in a variety of formats. Find out why the New York Times named Ploughshares “the Triton among minnows.”The Summer 2025 issue, edited by Victor LaValle, features prose by Helen Phillips, Deesha Philyaw, S.A. Cosby, Joanna Pear...

For anyone who's ever survived a rite of passage or performed a mating dance at Prom . . .The Japanese hold a Mogi ceremony for young women coming of age. Latina teenagers get quinceaneras. And Janice Wills of Melva, NC ... has to compete in the Miss Livermush pageant. Janice loves anthropology--the study of human cultures--and her observations help her identify useful rules in the chaotic world of high school. For instance: Dancing is an effective mating ritual--but only if you're...

The fourteen stories in Every Human Love redefine our sense of reality. Set seemingly in the quotidian, these tales veer into the unexpected, the uncomfortable, occasionally the eerie, thrusting characters in crisis into still greater quandaries, where the world of weddings and work, of frustrated hopes and mundane dissatisfactions, collides with a realm of legend, of fairy tale, of nightmare.

Poised on the precipice of mystery and longing, each character in Now You Know It All also hovers on the brink of discovery—and decision. Set in small-town North Carolina, or featuring eager Southerners venturing afar, these stories capture the crucial moment of irrevocable change. A young waitress accepts an offer from a beguiling stranger; a troubled boy attempts to unleash the villain from an internet hoax on his party guests; a smitten student finds more than she bargained for...

"Exquisite writer" (Julia Phillips), psychiatrist, and conjurer of the uncanny Joanna Pearson returns to the short story with virtuosic intensity, insight, and intimacy.The stories in More Happy Love speak to the many faces of mid-life's quiet revolt. A psychiatrist meets her late husband’s harshest critic, torn between insatiable lust and vengeance. A timid mother realizes that to save her daughter she must terrorize her. An audiologist begins discovering...

Bloomsbury presents Bright and Tender Dark by Joanna Pearson, read by Mara Wilson.For readers of Notes on an Execution and I Have Some Questions for You, a wire-taut literary debut about a murder on a college campus and its aftermath twenty years later.“Bright and Tender Dark . . . will sweep you away.” —Julia Phillips, author of Disappearing Earth“A haunting and lyrical read” —Becky Cooper, author of We Keep the Dead CloseDays after the dawn of Y2K, beautif...

For anyone who's ever survived a rite of passage or performed a mating dance at Prom . . .The Japanese hold a Mogi ceremony for young women coming of age. Latina teenagers get quinceaneras. And Janice Wills of Melva, NC ... has to compete in the Miss Livermush pageant.Janice loves anthropology--the study of human cultures--and her observations help her identify useful rules in the chaotic world of high school. For instance: Dancing is an effective mating ritual--but only if...

Seventeen-year-old Arin Andrews shares all the hilarious, painful, and poignant details of undergoing gender reassignment as a high school student in this winning memoir.We’ve all felt uncomfortable in our own skin at some point, and we’ve all been told that “it’s just a part of growing up.” But for Arin Andrews, it wasn’t a phase that would pass. He had been born in the body of a girl and there seemed to be no relief in sight.In this revolutionary memoir, ...

In her unique, generous, and affecting voice, nineteen-year-old Katie Rain Hill shares her personal journey of undergoing gender reassignment. Now with a reading group guide!Katie Rain Hill realized very young that a serious mistake had been made; she was a girl who had been born in the body of a boy. Suffocating under her peers’ bullying and the mounting pressure to be “normal,” Katie tried to take her life at the age of eight years old. After several other failed...