About Epiphanies
The Epiphanies New Works Festival was founded in 2020, seeking to explore new and innovative work. Growing exponentially year to year, the unique feedback process that we are committed to providing for our participating playwrights has become one of the things we are most known for.
The top 8 submissions each year receive a developmental table reading, and 4 of those go on to receive directed staged readings at our in-person festival. Perhaps most excitingly, the winner is given a full production of their play the following year.
So bookmark this page! Mark your calendar! We are always ready to read the next exciting piece of theatre, and we are committed to providing a meaningful platform to emerging artists.
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Wild Imaginings is dedicated to promoting the development of new work, as it is the work of artists which serves to shape the identity of a place—
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Epiphanies New Works Festival hopes to further Waco’s ability to answer a resounding YES to each of these questions.
And we want you to help us do it!
Meet the 2023
WINNER!!!
Hypotheticals
By Rebecca Anne Nguyen
Set in current-day Chicago, this play is about a beautiful but misanthropic woman who kisses a stranger in an elevator on her way to mandatory psychotherapy. When the stranger turns out to be her new therapist, they’re forced into a professional relationship where the intimate environment is as fertile for romantic tension as it is for personal growth—until the revelation of a mutual secret threatens to bind them together or tear them apart. In an age where up to 20% of the world’s population is neurodivergent, this story shatters stereotypes about neurodiversity and Autism, arguing that neurodivergent brains are not faulty and that there’s no wrong way to be human.
Rebecca Anne Nguyen (she/her/hers) is a playwright, writer, and co-author of the award-winning memoir, Where War Ends. She studied playwriting and acting at the University of Miami and fiction with Hannah Tinti at the Sirenland Writers Workshop in Positano, Italy. Rebecca's short plays have been produced at theatres in New York, Miami, and Los Angeles. She lives with her family in Milwaukee, WI.
Meet the 2024
Finalists!
Vampire Panic!
By Kate Mickere
In 1890’s New England, a wave of consumption is wreaking havoc in a small town. The local doctor is using the epidemic to sell his fraudulent elixirs and tonics, young women are actively trying to catch the disease to achieve their dream figures and a preacher woman has everyone convinced that consumption is caused by vampires. (That’s right, blood sucking undead VAMPIRES.) When the logical Lucy Greene returns home to care for her orphaned niece, she takes it upon herself to teach her neighbors about germ theory but will her recent encounter in Europe dilute her message? Inspired by true historical events, Vampire Panic! is a gothic pandemic comedy that reminds us that medical misinformation, conspiracy theories and general hysteria aren’t just byproducts of the Covid era.
Kate Mickere is a writer based in Los Angeles. Her play, NURSE CADDEN, won First Place in the inaugural A is For Playwriting Contest. The script, chosen by a panel led by two-time Pulitzer Prize winning playwright Lynn Nottage, received a virtual reading that starred Ann Dowd. NURSE CADDEN is published by Next Stage Press. Kate’s playwriting has also been developed/produced by The Vagrancy, The Last Frontier Theatre Conference, Actors Theatre of Louisville, The Kennedy Center American College Theatre Festival, Ugly Rhino and Meet Cute - LA. Her screenplay, CAPTURING THE STARS, won the Alfred P. Sloan Screenwriting Award and received an Honorable Mention for the Sloan/Tribeca Grand Jury Prize. She holds an MFA in Dramatic Writing from Carnegie Mellon University, where she was the recipient of the Steven Bochco Fellowship. Kate is an alumna of The University of Pittsburgh and The British American Drama Academy’s “Midsummer in Oxford” Program.
The Wonderful Out There
By Dave Osmundsen
The Wonderful Out There takes place in a group home for neurodivergent children, where they can solve mysteries, draw on walls, play space exploration, and eat their favorite foods. None of them can leave without “permission.” One day, 11-year-old Daryl arrives. Unsure how he got there, Daryl is eager to return home and celebrate his 12th birthday with his family. While waiting to get “permission” to leave, he befriends the other children living in the home—aspiring detective Jennifer, the non-speaking artist Bethany, and the home’s firm but kind caretaker, Larry. But when Daryl learns the truth about his new home, he is faced with an impossible choice. A play about trauma, ableism, and the hopeful possibility of a better future.
Dave Osmundsen (He/Him/His) is an Autistic playwright and dramaturg whose work has been seen and developed at KCACTF Region 8, the Kennedy Center/NNPN MFA Playwrights Workshop, the Great Plains Theatre Conference, Purple Crayon Players, B Street Theatre, the William Inge Theatre Festival, the Midwest Dramatists Conference, Phoenix Theatre Company, Clamour Theatre Company, Premiere Stages, the Valdez Theatre Conference, and more. He was a recipient of the Blank Theatre and Ucross Foundation’s inaugural Future of Playwriting Prize. His plays have been published by The Dionysian, Canyon Voices, Exposition Review, Fresh Words: Contemporary One Act Plays Volume 5, and Broadway Play Publishing. MFA: Arizona State University.
Crawlspaceblog
By Rebecca Kane
Meet Claire. She runs a super hip Airbnb for budding writers in a beautiful forest. She gets her coffee from the farmer’s market. She’s a good listener, and she’ll always give you as many extra towels as you need. Then as you’re getting ready for bed that night, she’ll watch you in your most private, mundane moments, and she’ll tell the world all about every little detail on her blog. Crawlspaceblog is a new play in development following Claire as she follows her renters, until she gets a special new guest whose unexpected bond with her may threaten more than just her livelihood and her weird little nighttime hobby.
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Rebecca Kane is an Astoria, Queens-based playwright, stage manager, and indie theatre producer. Her writing has appeared in numerous theatres, festivals, and streaming events, including the International Human Rights Arts Festival, Relative Theatrics, The Tank, and many more. In 2021, she received a City Artist Corps Grant from the New York Foundation of the Arts for developing a new play entitled Crawlspaceblog. She has publications of many of her short plays through Smith & Kraus and multiple literary magazines. She is a member of Dramatists Guild of America, Rising Sun Performance Company, and PlayGround-NY Writers Pool 2022-23.
The Sporting Life
By Marjorie Muller
“Dad’s new girlfriend is a serial killer and it’s honestly kind of iconic.”
16-year-old Dot still hasn’t gotten her period. Lucky for her, there’s a Witch in the woods who can get it started. However, in exchange, Dot must offer her the life of a man who has wronged her. And who better to offer than a math teacher? When Dot gets her elusive first period and becomes witness to the Witch’s murder, they become bonded in literal blood, sending Dot down a path of self-understanding, bitterness, and perhaps a little bit of violence too (as a treat). The Sporting Life is a ‘this girl is a woman now’ story brutally snapped open to expose the, sometimes literal, entrails of growing up girl.
Marjorie Muller writes body plays and when she’s not writing body plays, she’s writing romance novels, which are kind of like body plays but sexier. Marjorie's work has appeared at Urbanite Theatre, The Women’s Theatre Festival, Avalanche Theatre, and Northwestern University (among others). Most recently, her plays "littlespace, or the daddy play" and "The Sporting Life" were semi-finalists for The O'Neill. Marjorie is an alum of the acting program at the Theatre School at DePaul, Jackalope Theatre Playwright’s Lab, New Coordinates’ Writers Room and The Road Theatre's Under Construction 3 cohort. Currently, she is developing a new play, "Hypergamater", as part of Three Brother Theatre's Playwriting Residency.
Ink & Paint
By Danielle E. Moore
This historical docu-musical follows five women artists at Walt Disney Studios in the 1930s and beyond, whose ranks included immigrants from Europe and Asia, a single mother and architect, a record-breaking pilot, a concept artist, and Disney’s first credited woman animator. At the musical’s outset, in 1991, former Disney employees Gyo Fujikawa, Sylvia Moberly Holland, Grace Huntington and Retta Scott convene to accept a Disney Legend Award on behalf of their friend and colleague, Mary Blair, who passed away of a cerebral hemorrhage in the 1970s. The company’s framing of Mary’s legacy prompts an outburst from Retta, her closest friend at the studio, who argues that they are distorting history. With the help of Gyo, Sylvia, and Grace, she tells the real story of what happened to the first women to work in Disney’s story department in the 1940s, ultimately revealing her complicity in a dark secret that impacted Mary’s work. In this musical group monologue, the characters share their experiences working in a male-dominated industry in the shadow of global conflict and labor uprising, painting a picture of the impact their art had on groundbreaking films like Snow White and Fantasia—one for which they were seldom recognized.
Danielle E. Moore (she/they; Book, Music & Lyrics) is an NYC-based writer and producer. She is the EP of Green Light Group Productions, where she leads the development of new musicals and related content across stage and screen. She has developed and produced content for companies including NBCUniversal and The Shubert Organization. Select theater credits include the Audrey Hepburn biomusical Audrey, which premiered Off-Broadway at The Players Theatre in summer 2022, and premiered regionally with Helen Hayes Award-winning theater company Creative Cauldron in Washington D.C. in May 2023, becoming the highest-grossing production in the organization’s 20-year history; and the interactive TV singing competition musical CROSSOVER (City of Philadelphia Illuminate the Arts Grant; Philadelphia Inquirer’s “Theater to See This Week”). She received a 2018 Office of the Provost Year of Innovation Grant to lead a student workshop of a revisionist musical adaptation of The Great Gatsby at the University of Pennsylvania, and a 2024 NYSCA-A.R.T./New York Creative Opportunity grant in support of GLG. She was a finalist for the 2021 Johnny Mercer Foundation Songwriters Project, and holds a BA from The Annenberg School at the University of Pennsylvania.
Meet the 2024
Semi-Finalists!
I Never Asked for a GoFundMe
By Jayne Deely
When Millie is granted a prestigious fellowship in her hometown of Mobile, AL, she and her partner Avery, who is on the cusp of gender affirming top surgery, temporarily relocate to her hometown full of ghosts and the whispers of neighbors who can't understand how a nice girl like Millie could throw away the heterosexual life of service they all nvisioned for her (surely it's Avery's fault sweet Millie doesn't go to church anymore). On a routine trip to pick up meds in the wake of Avery's surgery, Millie's innocent conversation with the pharmacist is overheard by Teresa, who wrongly assumes that Avery has breast cancer. Zealous woman of God that she is, Teresa immediately springs into action. Cue casseroles, checkbooks, and care packages – a gofundme to SAVE AVERY! As the clock of March Madness winds down, Millie attempts to manage the chaos, and Avery is faced with an impossible truth: outing themselves or telling the truth.
Jayne Deely (they/them) is a queer latiné writer from Queens, NY, the collaboration between a Puerto Rican mom from East Harlem and a former Catholic priest father from Pittsburgh, PA, leading to a lot of work about privilege, gender, and lingering Catholicism. Jayne’s work has been developed with KCACTF at the Kennedy Center, American Stage, the New Harmony Writers’ Conference, Renaissance Theatreworks, and Coe College, among others. They are a two-time winner of the Latinx Playwriting Award, including Distinguished Achievement for the Paula Vogel Award, with KCACTF, two-time semi-finalist for the O’Neill Playwrights’ Conference and Bay Area Playwrights Festival, a recent top 3 finalist for the 23-24 Mazumdar New Play Award at the Alley Theatre in Buffalo, NY and top 10 finalist for the 2023 Woodward/Newman Award. MFA Playwriting, IU Bloomington. BA, Fordham College Lincoln Center, Honors College. Proud member of AEA, SAG-AFTRA, Dramatists’ Guild. They are currently at work on a commission for American Stage of an interactive Pride play to take place June 2024 in downtown St. Petersburg.
Platos Baby
By Tim Boland
PLATO'S BABY is a play about love, and not just physical or romantic love, but something much more. KATHERINE and PHILLIP, later 30s-40s, bruised and battered from modern day love and marriage, each wanting a child but unable to find the partner to have it with, are connected through a matchmaking service to match people to enter into a platonic friend, no sex, no romance, no marriage, conscious co-parenting relationship to raise a biological child of their own making. But what was intended to simplify their lives grows more complicated as their ability to maintain their commitment to their no sex arrangement proves much more challenging than they had envisioned. A Greek chorus of history's world- famous figures and experts on love and sex and friendship spanning the centuries frequent the stage with their experience and eloquence on the subject of love as KATHERINE and PHILLIP teeter on the edge between realizing a higher form of love or succumbing to the sublime madness of it all!
Tim Boland has been a two-time O’Neill semifinalist, and he has been selected as a semifinalist for the Ashland New Play Festival, as well as the winner of both Ame Acting Company’s New Play Festival and Long Beach Playhouse New Works Festival. His work has been premiered and produced by Colony Theatre, The Road Theatre Company, Cast Theatre, No Smoking Playhouse, and Spotlight Vermont. His one act, In the Name of the People, was adapted for film by CBS Productions after premiering in Los Angeles. He is a member of the Dramatists Guild and WGA, and playwright member of the New Play Exchange.
Lived Experience
By Amy Tofte
When an android falls in love with her human co-worker, she must learn difficult human nuances such as love vs. lust and support vs. control. HR is forced to get involved and protect their investment to the corporation. Each interaction pushes the constantly learning android to create a shared trauma that binds her as close as possible to her human companion. The intersection of love, greed and capitalism comes to a head and the humans must decide if they can live without artificial intelligence in their lives or stay bound to the corporation. Is there an algorithm for love? Is love even real? Or is it merely an agreed upon delusion between consenting sentient beings?
Amy Tofte is an award-winning playwright and screenwriter who won the 2015 Nicholl Fellowship in screenwriting from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Her play Righteous Among Us (2020 Todd McNerney Award) had a staged reading at Urban Stages (off-Broadway) in early 2023 with recent productions including her play Da Vinci’s Cockroach at The LaBute New Theater Festival (St. Louis, MO) and Parts & Pieces (Larking House in Santa Ana, CA). She is currently a playwright with the Evolving Playwrights Group at Circle X Theatre in Los Angeles where she is writing a new “impossible play” called Rain Dog War. She has been in residence at the Autry Museum of the American West, Brush Creek, Monson Arts, The Kennedy Center and Yaddo with work produced and developed throughout the United States, Australia, the United Kingdom, and twice at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. She is a proud member of The Dramatists Guild. MFA, CalArts.
Take me. a folie à deux
By Brian James Polak
A person decides they want to leave their current life so they turn to the dark web to hire somebody to kidnap them. It seems like a perfect plan until the kidnaper arrives and reveals themself to be less than up to the task.
Brian James Polak is an award-winning playwright born and raised in New Hampshire. His plays have been presented at venues and schools around the country, and have been published by Smith & Kraus, Talon Review, Commonplace Books, NoPassport Press, Next Stage Press, and Canyon Voices. When not writing plays, he can be found working as the producer and host of American Theatre magazine's "The Subtext," a podcast about what makes playwrights tick. He received his MFA in Dramatic Writing from the University of Southern California, School of Dramatic Arts.
Finding Medusa
By Madeline Daly Puccioni & Jeff Dunn
FINDING MEDUSA (Madeline Puccioni, libretto; Jeff Dunn, music) is a light-hearted feminist take on Clash of the Titans -- the good one -- Harryhausen, 1981. It is also musical comedy with heart and soul, rooted in some of the deepest soil of Western culture, the Greek Myth of Perseus and Medusa. But we have re-imagined the myth to restore Perseus to his status as a genuine cosmic hero, and Medusa, to her status as the benevolent ancient goddess whose name still means "Guardian and Protector." A new musical operetta which asks a headline question, this election year: What is a hero? Does a hero have to be male? A warrior? A winner? A bully? How about the everyday heroes we know, who sacrifice their time and energy to help those in need? How about all of us who, like Perseus and Medusa -- are willing to "take a chance on love?"
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Madeline Puccioni is a company member of Towne Street Theatre, L.A., and an active member of P.A.G.E.S NYC., Dramatists Guild, Opera America, National Opera Association and ALAP (Association of Los Angeles Playwrights). Since she retired from teaching college English, she’s had dozens of short plays produced and several of them published as an anthology show, PIERCINGS, by Next Stages Press. FINDING MEDUSA has been showcased at the Osher Theatre in Berkeley and workshopped in the Next Stage Musical Theatre program in Berkeley, CA, and was featured at the NOA conference in January. Madeline’s new feature length screenplay, THE CASSANDRA MURDERS, has won four Best Script Awards and her TV Pilot, NOW AND AT THE HOUR has won two Best TV Pilot Awards. Madeline is 70, has a nice little pension and great healthcare (for an American), and she plans to live ‘til she’s 101. Like Dominique Morisseau, she believes that “good writers see themselves in everyone.” She lives with her handsome Monroe in Oakland, California. She’s having fun.
Welcome to My Life
By Bobby Cronin
When Cody’s parents ship him off to wilderness camp, his immediate instinct is to run away. In fact, he tries. (Spoiler alert: it doesn’t work.) But as he gets to know the other kids at camp, the counselors, and even the therapist who is shockingly not so bad, he starts to see that this may be something entirely other than the hellscape he’d expected. It might be a path toward healing. Welcome to My Life explores gives voice to those who have faced trauma in the form of bullying, abuse, mental health, divorce, death and more. Plus, a group of teens without technology to distract themselves? Might be a powerful thing.
Bobby Cronin is a multi-disciplinary, multi-award winning composer, lyricist, bookwriter, music producer, arranger whose work has been seen all over the globe. He has worked/written with Emmy, Grammy, & Tony winner Billy Porter, Tony winner Jordan Roth, Eden Espinosa (Wicked, Brooklyn), Cassie Levy (Caroline or Change, Les Miserables, Wicked), Tony nominee Alex Brightman (Beetlejuice), Jordan Donica (Camelot, Hamilton), Tony nominee Laura Bell Bundy (Legally Blonde), Tony nominee Andy Karl (Groundhog Day, Into the Woods), Tony winner Orfeh (Legally Blonde), Tony nominee Christy Altomare (Anastasia), Natalie Weiss (Breaking Down the Riffs) and many more. His musicals include: Mary and Max (which has won a slew of awards), 'Til Death Do Us Part (SDSU New Works Award 2018-2020), Daybreak, W2ML, Psykidz, and Till Soon, Anne. Bobby was just awarded Best Off Broadway Score as part of the Waiting in The Wings writing team. He graduated from Yale University where he won the Michael P. Manzella Award. He is a member of ASCAP and the Dramatists Guild. www.BobbyCronin.com
And our short list represents less than the top 8% of the plays submitted, which is no small feat.
The Butterfly Anchor by Darrin Friedman
A former Olympic swimmer, who once basked in glory, is diagnosed with ALS. Overwhelmed by the frightening prospect of losing his independence, he hesitantly hires an unconventional, spirited young woman to be his full-time caregiver. As their unexpected bond deepens, they realize that both have endured traumatic experiences at the hands of family members and others, preventing them from moving on.
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The House of Flightless Birds by Baylee Shlichtman
When undiagnosed autistic Manuel tosses a wish to a satellite to make him feel less alone, an injured sparrow crashes from the heavens into his apartment patio. Manuel takes the bird inside to nurse it back to health in secret from his family, but all does not go according to plan. A play about masculinity and care.
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Are You Sure? Experiences of a Gay Foster Youth by Zachary Clein
Are You Sure? Experiences of a Gay Foster Youth is about a young man searching for meaning through the memories of his time in foster care as his life has taken another difficult turn. By reliving the pain and love he discovered through this turbulent time he hopes to finally find a sense of peace with it all.
Fly, Blackbird Fly/Voices We Can’t Unhear by Latrice P. Young
This choreopoem is a summation of 10 years of spoken word poems, questions, conversations, imaginations and reimaginations. They are based on true accounts from girls and women of varying ages, choosing to grapple with and celebrate what it means to be a black woman in the world today.
Path of Least Regret by Brian Gene White
Path of Least Regret follows two scientists in NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Where it can take hours or even days to send one signal to a spacecraft and receive something back. When the possibility of an office romance is in the air, funding is always in question, and lives are at the crossroads, the time between signals can feel like a lifetime. This play is about a few of those lifetimes.
Gallows Tales by Steve Callahan
Gallows Tales, in keeping with its title, has a gallows at the center of the story. But over the course of three tales in three times, it becomes a symbol not only of punishment, but duty, solace, and even hope. Asking hard questions about thought-sin, the role of conscience, and communal grieving, Gallows Tales is as hard-hitting as it is startlingly magical.
Special Hospital by Matt Hoffman
Dad is gravely ill. In desperation, his hard-charging entrepreneurial daughter Sarah has had him transferred to an obscure, innovative hospital. There, Dr. James Danforth Hobson (who might be a visionary, a grifter, or both) initiates an aggressive plan of care, assisted by his no-nonsense nurse Jana. Sarah and her brother Robbie, who have been estranged for six years, grapple with each other and their troubled childhood as they seek healing for their father under increasingly absurd circumstances.
Nephesh by Asher de Forest
After crash landing in the Pacific Ocean, Madison finds himself an eager extraterrestrial without a clear path home. Soon, he's keeping conflicting secrets from his new human crush—Elijah, a recent rabbinical school dropout—and his native planet’s flamboyant queen, who intends to conquer the Earth..
Witch’s Tit by James Lewis Huss
Witch's Tit is a dark comedy set in Puritan New England. Bessie Bloodsmyth, is accused of witchcraft by the obsessive town minister, though it is her wife who is caught by the constable. When her Sarah is hanged, Bloodsmyth plots revenge against the minister who did it and the mayor who encouraged it. This play is not a crucible of women, but of men.
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Overlap by Erin Proctor
Being 25 years old and moving to NYC and becoming a person and the crumbling infrastructure of the MTA. It's a play about people who make plays, but it's also a love story. And it's a ghost story. And it's a tragedy. And it's a comedy. It's overlapping with different genres.
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The Couple on the Couch by Anne Valentino
Dylan and Radha are a married couple who’ve hit a bit of a rough patch. What’s the solution for saving their marriage? A couples therapy-based reality TV show of course! After being chosen to appear on “Couples on the Couch: The LGBTQ Edition,” the women quickly realize that reality television is anything but “real.”
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Second Book Syndrome by Sam Heyman
Robert Schiftan, a successful debut novelist dealing with writer’s block, is behind on producing pages for his follow up when he is visited by a young black woman who turns out to be Calliope “Callie” Thornwind, the protagonist of his novel.
Alisha Firewind by Ryan Elliot Wilson
The Parson family is coping, like everyone else who isn’t a fascist—pardon, a "Patriot"—with the end free society in their home state. Lost jobs, healthcare, surveilled by neighbors—it’s tough all over. But unlike everyone else, the Parsons have Alisha Firewind, a therapeutic, taxidermy mule head hanging in their living room who helps them sing their struggles.
Mother by Fig Lefevre
Mama is nearing death and she has finally decided what she wants her daughters to do with her body when she passes: eat it. What unfolds is a story of womanhood, motherhood, and connection to ancestors, told in dreamscapes and dough, bread and song.
Color Blind by Oren Safdie
A reimagining of the architecture jury tasked with selecting a building for the Smithsonian African American Museum of History & Culture in Washington DC.
The Abundance by Chelsea Sutton
After moving to a new corner of suburbia, a broke young mom is lured into a multi-level marketing scheme by her new neighbors and a slick-talking bottle of tonic, and must either claw her way to the top of the pyramid, or lose everything by leaving.
Petrichor by Chris Woodworth
What happens to those left behind in the wake of an on-campus suicide? Madeleine (a professor) and Julie (a student) try to make sense of this seemingly senseless act. As the women navigate their respective grief (and guilt) journeys, they grapple with the challenges of recovering a research protocol. In these moments of acute stress, unlikely friendships are forged, and others are fractured.
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Touch the Moon by Arianna Rose
Miranda is a high school student leaving for Spring Break on an unnamed island. That is the last time she is ever seen alive. Through vignettes that connect past and present, we meet Miranda, her mother Becca, her best friend Emily, Stefan, and his father Dirk. A play about how humans need to know, and sometimes need to tell, TOUCH THE MOON draws a line between truth and lies and how they intersect. At its heart it is a story of motherly love and determination in the face of the unthinkable.
1999 by Stacey Isom Campbell
1999 depicts the intersection of three women’s lives. When her student makes a complaint about the choice of films shown in class, the protagonist, Emma – a film criticism professor and film producer – interrogates her own guilt for something she did in 1999, and asks what she should do with the films she loves from the 90s in light of the recent sexual assault allegations about Hollywood at the time.
The Last Days of the Contract Player by Andy Reynolds
When his troubled, pot-smoking nineteen-year-old nephew vanishes into the wilderness, classic movie-obsessed Eddie returns to his childhood home to help his estranged, religious sister and his opinionated, rebellious niece in the search, while simultaneously juggling his on-again, off-again relationship with a film studies professor. The Last Days of the Contract Player is a funny and touching exploration of love, of stargazing while living in the real world, and of the possibility of connection in the vast expanse of space we create around ourselves.
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Estbay iendsfray by Emmy Kuperschmid
Hannah is terrified of change. Iris wants things to be better. They’re estbay iendsfray oreverfray–they have been since they sat next to each other in circle at preschool, and nothing is ever going to change that. Nobody will ever understand them like they understand each other. Things are changing now that they’re going into high school, but nothing has to change between THEM, right? Sometimes friendships make you better. Sometimes love makes you feel like you’re drowning.
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The Creator by J.S. Puller
Sara and Zabrina swore that they would be friends forever. It comes as quite a shock, when Sara returns from school and announces that she no longer wants to see Zabrina. Afraid, Zabrina (an imaginary friend) asks what will become of her, but Sara doesn’t answer. Suddenly, Zabrina finds herself in a limbo, being processed. Under the direction of Thalia, the muse of playfulness, Zabrina navigates the five stages of grief, represented by five other imaginary friends who have all met their undoing at the hands of “ungrateful children.”