This week we visit with Jen Fawkes in her hometown of Little Rock, Arkansas. 

Jen Fawkes is the author of Daughters of Chaos, a literary alternate history in which a female Union spy discovers a secret society of magical women that spans millennia. Pulitzer Prize finalist Kelly Link called Daughters of Chaos "ferociously, radiantly compelling," and according to Publishers Weekly's starred review, the novel is a "dazzling historical fantasy . . . both the historical and fantastical elements come alive in Sylvie’s suspenseful narration, which is interwoven with the text of the imaginary play. Fawkes wows with this wildly original tale.”

Jen's first book, Mannequin and Wife, was a 2020 Shirley Jackson Award Nominee, the winner of the 2023 Phillip H. McMath Post-Publication Book Award, and a Foreword INDIES gold medalist. Her collection Tales the Devil Told Me was a ForewordINDIES silver medalist, one of Largehearted Boy’s Favorite Collections of 2021, and a finalist for the 2022 World Fantasy Award for Single-Author Story Collection.

Jen's short fiction has won numerous awards, including the 2021 Porter Fund Literary Prize, and has appeared in One Story, Lit Hub, the Iowa Review, swamp pink, Best Small Fictions, and many others. A two-time finalist for the Calvino Prize for fabulist fiction, Jen lives in Little Rock, Arkansas.

For more on Jen: jenfawkes.com

Jen's Books on the Bed:

Italian Folktales by Italo Calvino

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick

Mrs. Caliban by Rachel Ingalls 

Chronicle of a Death Foretold by Gabriel García Márquez

The Odyssey by Homer (Translated by Robert Fagles)

Piranesi by Susanna Clarke

Matt's Gifts for Jen:

The Unseen by Roy Jacobsen (Translated by Don Barlett, Don Shaw)

Seawomen of Iceland: Survival on the Edge by Margaret Willson

Graphic Design by Nathaniel Roy Design

Music by Eliza Edens from her album Time Away From Time (2020)