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Summer of the Cicadas is for sale!

“This bleak, slim novel packs a great deal of insight into depression, desire, and substance abuse from the perspective of a gay woman struggling to move forward in her life (“I still want to die sometimes, but I’m better at pretending”), and the merciless cicadas make for a moving metaphor of the wreckage Jessica must face and overcome. Catherine’s frightening vision makes for a worthy exercise in small-town horror.” – Publishers Weekly

Chelsea Catherine has lived and worked all over the country. After graduating with their MFA in creative writing, they moved to the Florida Keys where they wrote their first book, won their first grant and short story award, and began studying nonfiction.

In 2018, they won the Mary C Mohr award for nonfiction through the Southern Indiana Review and their second book, Summer of the Cicadas, won the Quill Prose Award from Red Hen Press. Most recently, they won an Emerging Artist’s Award from Creative Pinellas and spent a month in Alaska at the Alderworks Artists Retreat. They are part of a cohort of ValleyCreates artist grantees in Western Massachusetts and their story, The Not-Deer, is forthcoming in an anthology out of London, UK.

Chelsea lives in a hundred old home where they fight daily with a colony of black squirrels, take walks at the local reservoir, and study astrology, tarot, and sociology. They have been writing since they were eight years old.

Awards and Recognition