The Poor Children (SFWP Literary Awards)

This edgy, stunning collection deftly examines the underbelly of the human condition through a cross-section of fascinating characters—a correctional officer fixated on a juvenile offender, a Goth teenager and her werewolf boyfriend, a pyromaniac by happenstance, and a set of twins haunted by an unconfirmed death. Pushing beyond the norms of daily life and into the sometimes morally lawless worlds of her characters, Ford explores the eccentric, the perverse, the disenfranchised, and the darkly comic possibilities at play in us all.