#Incredible express publishing full

And what I almost always find is that, regardless of how wacky it seemed at first, I end up at a place where I’m talking about relationships between people, which are always interesting and complex. And so, I love to start with what I call a strange seed-and then I grow that seed up.

And not only is that just a fact, it’s also really fun.

#Incredible express publishing full

It’s full of weird animals it’s full of weird space stories. And I think we do an injustice to the world if we ignore that fact. MAX: In There Is Only Us, the utterly ordinary (frustrating bosses, high school, family) exists alongside the utterly weird (astronaut twins, a reversal of Genesis, unknowable secretions).

Max Owens from WWU's Graduate School sat down with Ballering (MFA, '19) to talk about the strangeness of the world, weird jobs, and her experience as an MFA student in Western’s creative writing program. Her writing is informed by her work in many different worlds: as the program manager for a historic tall ship, the receptionist at a garbage dump, an olive oil saleswoman, a teacher, a radio copywriter, and - currently - as the assistant dean of Admission Communication at Reed College. She loves stories that are playful, tender, and strange, and her speculative fiction has appeared in Electric Literature’s Recommended Reading, Craft, Hobart, and elsewhere. From a satirical retelling of the story of Noah’s ark, to sisters transforming into naked mole rats, Ballering’s debut collection journeys into weird and wonderful worlds - all while examining the connections that bind us.īallering is a writer and teacher who lives in Portland, Oregon. Western Washington University alumna Zoe Ballering’s collection of short stories, There Is Only Us, released in November 2022, recently won the 2022 Katherine Anne Porter Prize in Short Fiction from the University of North Texas Press.