Kristin Keane Knihy

When her mother died, Kristin Keane felt that there had to be a way she could still reach her. Could she travel into the past and spend just a few more hours with her? Or perhaps there was an alternate timeline, a parallel universe-the kind of thing promised by theoretical math and physics-in which her mother was still alive. In An Encyclopedia of Bending Time, Keane tells the story of her mother's illness and the aftermath of her death in an encyclopedia of their lives together, and of time-both science and science fiction. Putting thinkers like Einstein and Newton in conversation with pop culture touchstones like Quantum Leap and Interstellar, this formally innovative memoir follows Keane's searching efforts to make sense of grief, memory, and whether it's possible to get back what we've lost.

Agnes has been drifting away from herself. People look through her, her husband doesn't understand her, and lately, she's begun losing the sensations in her body. When a tube of shoplifted lipstick awakens her back to life, an impulse for stealing emerges that leads her to a court-ordered service at a camp for grieving children. While initially hoping only that the time there will help her give up stealing, Agnes soon learns that she can use objects to connect grieving children with the spirits of their parents. She must navigate the choice between using her compulsion for her own pleasure and helping the bereaved. Luminaries is about the things we take and about the things that are taken from us. It asks what it means to exist in lives filled with loss, to reach for the things we hope will restore us, and the risks we're willing to take to ward off yearning--both in our material lives and social lives. Luminaries is the winner of the Omnidawn Fabulist Fiction Novelette/Chapbook Prize, selected by Kellie Wells.