Eleanor Stern
Lucie Elven. Photo: Sophie Davidson In her fiction, Lucie Elven delves into the uses and abuses of language—the way it can obscure or uphold power dynamics, and act as medicine, a shield, or a trap. Elven’s new novel, The Weak Spot, is a fable and a tale of workplace power dynamics. The book’s nameless narrator accepts a pharmacy apprenticeship in a mountain town, where the pharmacy’s owner, Mr. Malone, trains her to think of her work as a type of therapy. She hears her customers’ fears and complaints, teasing out their secrets while Mr. Malone eavesdrops. This comes naturally 
Laura van den Berg. Photo: © Paul Yoon Laura van den Berg writes ghost stories: In her new book, I Hold a Wolf by the Ears, absences assume a life of their own, demanding to be acknowledged. The dead, the forgotten, and the lost have a shimmering vibrancy, becoming more present than the real. Like her ghostly figures, van den Berg comes home in this collection. Short stories were her first literary love, and I Hold a Wolf by the Ears is her return to the form after two successful novels. The book also represents a more literal homecoming.