We’re delighted to announce the next book in our Pomme novella series—Expedition by Valerie Vogrin!
Expedition is the story of a life upended. NPO water quality specialist Margo Webster returns to the US from Africa after recovering from an unnamed ailment. The organization sends her to Chicago and appears to have arranged lodging for her. Nothing makes sense. Though the organization doctors tell her she’s healthy, she still experiences several of the same symptoms—a heightened sense of smell and hallucinations—in addition to severe memory loss. When she tries to figure out what happened, she is thwarted. The organization claims she never reached Africa, that she failed a drug test after training. The novella follows her on her quest to find answers and to find a path forward. She unearths few certain answers, though she does find some allies and a surprise paranormal power. Maybe.
Vogrin describes the work as “slipstream fiction: psychological realism with an element of science fiction.”
Our editor notes, “Expedition is a novella that questions reality. A middle-aged woman experiences amnesia and paranoia following work at a government-sponsored humanitarian organization. Living among strangers, she tries to piece together recent events and her past. With a dystopian bend, the narrative is fast paced and comes to a surprising end.“
Valerie Vogrin’s collection Things We’ll Need for the Coming Difficulties was awarded the Spokane Prize for Short Fiction (Willow Springs Press, 2020). She is the author of the novel Shebang, and her short stories have appeared in journals such as Ploughshares, AGNI, Hobart, Memorious, Zone 3, and The Los Angeles Review as well asin 2011 Pushcart Prize XXXV: Best of the Small Presses, The Best Small Fictions 2015, and New Stories from the Midwest 2020. Her work has been supported by residencies at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts and the Anderson Center for Interdisciplinary Studies. Valerie received her MFA from the University of Alabama. She’s a professor of creative writing at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville. She lives with her husband, dog, and cat on a tiny unnamed lake in Moro, Illinois.
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