Stoop City — Kristyn Dunnion

WINNER OF THE 2021 RELIT AWARD FOR SHORT FICTION

A sea witch, a bossy Virgin Mary, and a lesbian widow's wife -- in ghost form -- walk into a short story collection ...

Welcome to Stoop City, where your neighbours include a condo-destroying cat, a teen queen beset by Catholic guilt, and an emergency clinic staffed entirely by lovelorn skeptics. Couples counseling with Marzana, her girlfriend's ghost, might not be enough to resolve past indiscretions; our heroine could need a death goddess ritual or two. Plus, Hoofy's not sure if his missing scam-artist boyfriend was picked up by the cops, or by that pretty blonde, their last mark. When Jan takes a room at Plague House, her first year of university takes an unexpected turn -- into anarcho-politics and direct action, gender studies and late-night shenanigans with Saffy, her captivating yet cagey housemate.


From the lovelorn Mary Louise, who struggles with butch bachelorhood, to rural teens finding -- and found by -- adult sexualities, to Grimm's “The Golden Goose” rendered as a jazz dance spectacle, Kristyn Dunnion's freewheeling collection fosters a radical revisioning of community. Dunnion goes wherever there's a story to tell -- and then, out of whispers and shouts, echoes and snippets, gritty realism and speculative fiction, illuminates the delicate strands that hold us all together.