Sean Kinch

1 week ago | chapter16.org | Erica Wright |Sean Kinch |Lee Conell |Ed Tarkington

In her new story collection Hellions, Julia Elliott embraces the grotesque, playing with a rich literary tradition and molding it into something wholly her own. These tales teem with supernatural creatures — demons, hags, changelings, and swamp apes — but it’s the humans who are most compelling. Hellions opens with “Bride” in which the nun Wilda flagellates and starves herself to purge her body of sin, specifically lust.

1 month ago | chapter16.org | Sean Kinch |Maria Browning |Emily Choate |Faye Jones

For a story set amid the darkness and ugliness of World War II, Alice Austen’s 33 Place Brugmann is peculiarly focused on beauty. Set largely in the eponymous Brussels apartment building, this debut novel depicts the struggles of a group of characters for whom art and life are interchangeable. Mere survival doesn’t suffice; they cling to the hope that, when the ravages of war subside, the jewels of civilization will be restored to their pedestals.

2 months ago | chapter16.org | Emily Choate |Sean Kinch |Kim Green |Michael Taylor

When novelist Geraldine Brooks received the devastating phone call informing her that her husband of more than 30 years, celebrated nonfiction writer Tony Horwitz, had died unexpectedly while on tour for his latest book, she found herself trapped between warring impulses. “I paced the room, feeling the howl forming in my chest,” she writes in her new memoir, Memorial Days.