Story from Near Strangers Featured in Electric Lit

Big thanks to Electric Lit for featuring “Chincoteague,” a story from Marian Crotty’s forthcoming collection, Near Strangers, and to Pam Houston for her lovely intro to the piece. Pam says:

What I like most about this story is what I like about the whole collection. Crotty is a writer who is fair to all her characters. Everyone is suffering, making mistakes born of fear and sadness, and everyone is fighting to be decent, to be moral in a society that has lost its center, to do the right thing even though there might not be any more right things to do. How bewildering to be on the cusp of adulthood, growing up with active shooter drills, graduating from Zoom school, watching the climate collapse in real time, while people fight over whether or not you can be who you actually are and do what you want with your own body. “Chincoteague” makes us see not only into Nora’s helplessness and “snowplow parenting,” but into the desperation of young people trying to forge an identity and help one another through.

Read the full story on Electric Lit‘s website.