Read Girl Country, and you’ll see the world with a newly refreshed vision.” Yet the stories find illumination in the darkness as the characters bend toward empathy and connection. Her characters encounter threats from environmental collapse, economic divide, and social structures that repress and contain women. The stories range in time from the Middle Ages, to our present day, to a dystopian future that is uncannily recognizable. “In Girl Country, Jacqueline Vogtman tells stories of hope and connection in the face of terrifying forces. Anne Valente, author of By Light We Knew Our Names This is an essential, urgent and awe-inspiring collection.” Across eleven stories-and eleven sharp, individual worlds-Vogtman illuminates both the pain and wonder of women’s lives through the magic of mermaids, monsters and outer space. “Each story in Jacqueline Vogtman’s Girl Country is absolutely luminous, the gorgeous writing and fantastical premises lingering with the reader for days after.

Publisher: Dzanc Books Local: Frenchtown Bookshop Other: | Barnes & Noble | Target | Amazon The stories in Girl Country, which range from medieval Belgium to the near-future of the American Midwest, are populated by mothers and monsters, mermaids and milkmaids, nuns and bus drivers-women in every walk of life, but particularly working-class women, navigating the intersection of the mundane and the magical. About the book, Dan Wickett, Dzanc’s co-founder and founder of the Emerging Writers Network, said: “Jacqueline Vogtman’s stories grabbed me from the first page, immediately reminding me of some of my favorite collections-those that offer a strangeness to the stories within, but while sharing the author’s wild imagination, also drill deep into the nerve of the human condition.”

Jacqueline Vogtman’s first book, Girl Country, won the 2021 Dzanc Books Short Story Collection Prize, and will be published by Dzanc in May 2023. About Book Stories Interviews Events Contact

Camp Olvido by Lawrence Coates