The Earth Room
Winner of the 2024 Hudson Prize
"The Earth Room" transports us from the forests of Appalachia to the Sonoran Desert to the glaciers of Iceland, all while exploring the mysteries of what it means to be alive.
In one story, a woman transforms her boyfriend into a salamander. In another, a group of women are drawn together by a support group for the partners of vampires and werewolves. Inhabiting this haunting and fantastical collection are secret tunnels, magical doorways, modern witches, a mother who gives birth to a ghost, a town full of doubles, a sanctuary for potbelly pigs, and a daughter who never grows up. "The Earth Room" offers a thrilling, fabulist journey through the natural world, superstition, motherhood, and loss.
Bio
Dana Diehl earned a Master of Fine Arts in creative writing at Arizona State University in 2015.
Praise for this book
Frosty and blistering, 'The Earth Room’s' short stories feature mothers, daughters, and lovers unearthing their pasts and thawing their presents.
Foreword Reviews
The Earth Room' is a revelation! Deftly straddling the human and the fantastical, this collection delights with its elegance and insight, and also with its many surprises. From rogue teeth to inexplicable disappearances, glaciers to underground tunnels, Dana Diehl’s fiction explores the many mysteries of existence, reminding us how much we have yet to discover in the world around us—as well as in our own hearts.
Allegra Hyde Author of "The Last Catastrophe"
