Join us in celebrating the launch of Sarah Harris Wallman’s story collection Senseless Women, winner of the 2019 Juniper Prize for Fiction. With readings from Sarah and guests Ashleigh Pedersen and Jaime DeBlanc-Knowles.

Exploring the darker side of optimism, Sarah Harris Wallman’s debut collection shows women attempting to build durable havens from reality, struggling to keep relationships intact, and reinventing themselves. A lonely music teacher at a Nashville Christian academy awaits the miracle of love; a Jane Doe recalls the affair that sustained—and ended—her; a new mother brings life into the world during a bleak election party; young girls are exploited by a nightclub owner in death, as in life. Alone or in weird sisterhood, some of these women are senseless because they refuse to feel, others because they’ve been deprived of stimuli and attention. As these twelve stories prove, there’s no sensible way to fall in love, raise children, or escape (even dead girls have to go on stage and sing for their supper). This is Senseless Women.

Sarah Harris Wallman grew up in Nashville, TN, though she has also lived in Arkansas, New York City, and Glastonbury, UK (that’s where King Arthur was buried). She has an MFA from the University of Pittsburgh and currently teaches in the MFA program at Albertus Magnus college in New Haven, CT. Her stories have received awards from the Tucson Festival of Books and Prada.

Ashleigh Pedersen’s fiction has been featured in New Stories from the South, The Kenyon Review, The Iowa Review, Design Observer, The Silent History, A Strange Object, and the New York Public Library’s Library Simplified app. Her story “Small and Heavy World” was a finalist for both Best American Short Stories and a Pushcart Prize. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Pittsburgh, where she was the recipient of a full scholarship and teaching fellowship as well as the Turow-Kinder Award. She just completed her first novel and can occasionally be spotted in Austin theater and film projects.

Jaime deBlanc-Knowles holds an M.A. in creative writing from the University of Texas at Austin. Her work has been published in Post Road and Meridian, and she has been the recipient of a MacDowell Fellowship and a Lighthouse Works Fellowship. She currently teaches creative writing workshops through UT Informal Classes, the Writing Barn, and Fresh Ink.