Lake Effect

Winner of the 2024 Mary McCarthy Prize in Short Fiction, selected by Lauren Groff A debut collection about the wild and hidden places in nature and the heart From Seattle to Istanbul, Lake Effect, the debut short story collection by Hillary Behrman, takes you to unmapped mountain ranges, wild urban places and the outskirts of a desert outpost dissecting 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.

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 an anthology. Lake Effect is her debut collection of short stories and was winner of the 2024 Mary McCarthy Prize for Short Fiction. Hillary lives and writes in the Pacific Northwest where she has worked as a children's civil rights attorney and a public defender. She hopes this work lends urgency to her stories. She's the parent of two young adults and her life and writing are rooted in a strong sense of family, community service and a connection to wild places. Learn more at hillarybehrman.com.