Projects
In This Age of Hard Trying
Set in the fictional town of Beaumont, Missouri, in 1935, neighbors Ruby Batten and Agathe Cornelissen resort to a variety of schemes to ensure the survival and happiness of their children while confronting the malversation of several local men. Told in chapters of alternating points of view, the novel follows these families and the saga of Roland Batten, Ruby's husband, as he builds Shenandoah National Park with the Civilian Conservation Corps. The convergence of their stories illuminates the desires of their past, untold tragedies, and the uncertainty of their futures.
1935
The Kindness
of Terrible
People
A paraplegic teenager and her father are stranded in a Utah desert, a couple travels to India after the loss of their baby, a lonely widow is on the hunt to kill a raccoon, a renowned cellist lies to be hired at a performing arts school, a mother fears detachment from her son, an art restorer lives in the shadow of her elusive mentor, a girl with a rare deformity becomes an unlikely heroine in Napoleonic France, and a Marine veteran and her husband face infertility treatments amid growing concerns over the gender of their future child. These are some of the characters inhabiting The Kindness of Terrible People, which spans a wide geography and cultural history. In this collection of seventeen short stories, girls and women are observed, by themselves and others, and judged with cruelty and compassion. They defy conventions of goodness to find their place in a world that so easily dismisses the validity of their choices.
1931-2020
French Fables for the Fain & Fair
This is a work in progress. Drawing upon her Franco-Canadian heritage, her mother's tales, the history of Brittany, Acadia, and Quebec, and folklore of the francophone diaspora, Stephanie re-imagines in this collection the traditional fable. Weaving vernacular and lyrical language, she writes characters that transcend their beliefs in the miraculous, the supernatural, and even the ridiculous.
1535-
1806
In the Province of Tiny Fish
This is a work in progress. In the Province of Tiny Fish is Stephanie's memoir of growing up in northern Quebec, amid the briny river breezes and dense forests of the St. Lawrence coast; of being uprooted to Montreal and then to Utah; of leaving the continent at age twenty-one for Italy; and, always, of finding her family among the tiny fish of these various seas. Written in non-chronological episodes and often detailed with unwavering honesty, she paints a portrait of a life sometimes touched by tragedy, yet never without humor.
1978-
2020