Catastrophe: Novella
Deirdre Danklin
Winner of the 2021 Clay Reynolds Novella Prize
At fourteen, two schoolgirls slit their palms with safety scissors and promised to be in each other’s lives forever. One, with a small spark of magical power, can hear her friend’s thoughts even as she rebels, runs away, and ends up in a chrome trailer in a desert. The other hears nothing, but still addresses her thoughts to her lost friend as she gets married, has a baby, and tries to build a stable life. When catastrophe hits the world, the desert woman takes in a gangly girl and tries to use her small power to stave off a doomsday church waiting for rain, a mean-spirited ex-girlfriend, and hopelessness that things will ever improve. The other woman flees with her family to a rich uncle’s cabin in the woods. When a scraggly stranger shows up asking for shelter, the woman is torn between safety and compassion, especially when she finds out there’s a gun in the garage.
Catastrophe is the winner of the 2021 Clay Reynolds Novella Prize, judged and selected by Leslie Jill Patterson.
Submissions for the 2022 Clay Reynolds Novella Prize are open January 1 to March 31.
Deirdre Danklin holds an MFA from Johns Hopkins University. She lives in Baltimore with her husband and orange tabby cat.
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