Books

Lake Effect Stories by Hillary Behrman

Lake Effect was chosen by Lauren Groff as the 2024 Winner of the Mary McCarthy Prize in Short Fiction at Sarabande Books and is forthcoming from Sarabande Books in May of 2026.

You can view its list of awards here.

Synopsis:

Wild places and hidden urban spaces exert a gravitational pull on the lives of the characters who populate the pages of Lake Effect, Hillary Behrman’s debut short story collection. On the surface of an ancient bone-dry lake, amidst pockets of urban wilderness, on top of unmapped mountain ridges, and in cities ranging from Seattle to Istanbul the characters in these stories are always on the move but are rarely headed to the places they want to be. 

Viv’s already tenuous grip on reality is shattered when she is forced to leave the safety of her remote desert outpost. Paula’s real life and dream life become indistinguishable when she meets Marcus while working at a local hospital. Oliver can’t seem to shed the hold of family lore and superstition 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. And in the aftermath of her mother’s death, Sam finds herself miles from shore on a frozen lake with a virtual stranger.

Across the eighteen stories in this collection the characters force us to reconsider all the ways we define and understand each other through and despite markers of class, race, gender, sexual orientation and lived experience. These unsettling stories question the limits of our well-intentioned efforts to care for each other while challenging narrative conventions as they shift through time, viewpoint, and place.

To learn more about this collection, please contact Hillary.

ANTHOLOGIES

Muddy Backroads: Stories From Off The Beaten Path

Edited by Luanne Smith and Bonnie Jo Campbell

"For this anthology, Muddy Backroads: Stories from Off the Beaten Path, the editors asked for stories that moved away from the norms of daily life to explore the side roads that take us away from the known. What do your characters do when they step away from what’s seen as normal or usual? What happens when they find themselves in unexpected situations or locations? What if nothing about their lives is what most consider typical? When a character takes a “muddy backroad,” he, they or she moves away from society and out into a place where anything can happen. Where will those backroads and back alleys take us?"

Contributors: Dorothy Allison, Hillary Behrman, Henri Bensussen, T.C. Boyle, Elizabeth Bruce, Ulrick Casimir, Michael Darcher, George Drew, Stephanie Dupal, Walter Evans, Michael Gaspeny, Roger Hart, David Hartshorne, Suzanne Heagy, Jen Knox, Mark Lammers, Robert McBrearty, Jayne Anne Phillips, Heather Mateous Sappenfield, Lee Scharf, Misty Skaggs, August Tarrier, Melanie Rae Thon, Luis Alberto Urrea, Siobhan Wright, and Paula Younger.

Hillary's short story, “The Jungle” was chosen by the editors and judge Alan Heathcock for inclusion in the anthology.

You may purchase a copy of Muddy Backroads directly from Madville Publishing or at your local independent bookstore.