2022 Acacia Fiction Prize

THE GEOGRAPHY OF FIRST KISSES

wins the 2022 Acacia Fiction Prize!

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Very happy to share this good news about my debut story collection!

Kallisto Gaia Press Executive Director Tony Burnett has selected The Geography of First Kisses as the winner of the 2022 Acacia Fiction Prize from the short list of finalists.

His praise for the collection:
“These ethereal stories, tenuously tethered by magical realism to the bays and backwaters of southern Louisiana, portray a quiet elegance reminiscent of early 20th century art films. Davidson saturates them with poetic illusion while powering the prose with a dark, pulsating circuitry. She combines joy, heartache, and tenacity in a recipe long forgotten but sorely missed in today’s super-structured literature. For an existential auto-erotic evening, read these stories slowly while dressed in your most sensory-stimulating loungewear.”

Forthcoming in 2023!

Fierce, Funny, Beautiful Debuts: My Two Final Interviews at Newfound

Newfound Interviews, Autumn 2021

Chaney Kwak

The Surprise of Survival: An Interview with Chaney Kwak

Chaney Kwak’s compelling and beautiful debut book, The Passenger, (Godine, 2021), flies beyond the classifications of memoir, travel reportage, and marine history to something more intense, wry, and personal. Even the book’s subtitle, “How a Travel Writer Learned to Love Cruises & Other Lies from a Sinking Ship,” might lead one to place the story within a category, but seriously, it’s just not that simple. Kwak’s story of surviving an intense storm at sea off one of Norway’s rockiest coastlines aboard the Viking Sky, a cruise liner carrying nearly 1400 passengers, is one that reaches beyond the fury of 65-meter swells and 75-km winds into the calm, genuine understanding of what is worth living for. “The Passenger” uncovers the surprise of survival and the realization of how life might truly be lived.

Arden Levine

Her Portrait in the Poem: An Interview with Arden Levine 

Arden Levine’s debut poetry collection, Ladies’ Abecedary (Small Harbor Publishing, 2021), reveals a stunning and surprising alphabet of women. From A to Z, these are women and girls who walk with wide steps through the world; who descend and ascend mountains thick with snow, stepping-stones and stories in each stride; who sit alone in rooms, reading, ready to be transformed; who swim through a slipstream of unforgettable language. This chapbook may appear a slim volume, its cover curious, beautiful, unsettling, but the pages within reveal a population that is as feminine as it is fierce. To read these poems is to be unearthed from the typical landscapes where women have been placed, to be spun around and sent toward “unruly asphalt gardens” and into the sleep of “a chrysalis curve.”

Springtime is blooming with Sybelia Drive Book Reviews

From Emily Webber’s book review of Sybelia Drive in Mom Egg Review:

“The effect of the multiple voices in Sybelia Drive is like being in a big shifting ocean, and you never know what or who is going to be churned up and if the waters will be rough or calm. We aren’t promised complete pictures of these lives, which is clear early on. Characters come and go, some getting only a chapter or two and fleeting mentions in other parts of the novel, but every character is deeply felt. Davidson weaves a complex and rich tapestry of each of these lives regardless of how much space they take up in the novel.”

Gratitude for another beautiful Sybelia Drive review!

May 2021 Independent Publisher Booklist - by Ellie Hawkes

Sybelia Drive included in the amazing May 2021 Booklist

chosen by book blogger, Ellie Hawkes.

Mother's Day on Sybelia Drive

This Mother’s Day the mamas of SYBELIA DRIVE—Eva, Minnie, and Lillian—are sitting together in lawn chairs by the lake, little paper umbrellas in their drinks. It’s cool in the shade, and they’re laughing and laughing. Want to join them? 🌸🍹🌴☀️

Buy your own mama and yourself a copy 💕

Braddock Avenue Books

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