Sad Grownups

<p><strong style=color: rgba(54 54 54 1)>For those who've been sad and tried not to be seventeen stories about the absurdity of searching for joy in a dying world. </strong></p><p></p><p><strong style=color: rgba(15 17 17 1); background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1)><em>Winner of the 2025 PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize for Debut Short Story Collection</em></strong></p><p></p><p><span style=color: rgba(54 54 54 1)>A neighborhood of picturesque content-creation houses perched on too-green lawns in a California desert; a meandering stampede of unleashed dogs on the streets of San Francisco; a skein of snow geese alighting in a state park in Missouri; an uncanny fundraising auction at an upscale suburban-DC prep school. Inhabiting these worlds of disconnection and dislocation are the sad grownups: a middle-aged queer couple arguing over whether to have children a college professor dying from cancer two recent high school graduates plotting a robbery a sixty-year-old counselor at a boys' summer camp sheltering herself from the realities of life-all connected more closely to the landscapes around them than to other people searching fervently for liberation understanding and even happiness wherever and however they might be found. </span></p>