I’m a finalist for the 2022 Chautauqua Janus Prize for my story “Jean” , where a preteen uses comics as her star map to navigate life, and wormholes.

Find the story in Speculative Fiction for Dreamers: A Latinx Anthology pubbed by Mad Creek at your friendly indie, or   https://bookshop.org/a/14972/9780814257982

Congratulations to all 5 finalists on this honor.

Here’s what editors and reviewers have to say: “Jean finely interweaves the Nuyorican experience with the mythology of the X-Men, exploring trauma from the distant perspective of Nova, a Rigellian Recorder. This story is a love-song to comics and their life-transforming potential!”

Publishers Weekly in their review of Speculative Fiction for Dreamers: “Themes of family, migration, and community resonate throughout these 38 masterful stories, as in “Jean” by Stephanie Nina Pitsirilos, which uses wormholes as a metaphor to consider intergenerational trauma.”

As ever, thank you to the slew of readers this story had in its many forms, my agent for believing in Jean’s novel (hit her up) and Matthew Goodwin –the editor that inspired me to make a story work, so I wrote Jean. Mom, thanks for letting me be a Recorder.

Much content for having the two heavy shorts I’ve written place as finalists in awards (one is a forthcoming chapbook). Read comics, write what you love, tell stories, charge on Frank Sinatra-style doing things your way, always with and in love. #CelebrateGoodThings. #WatchOutForWormholes