Welcome to another installment of If My Book, the Monkeybicycle feature in which authors compare their recently released books to weird things. This week Jill Stukenberg writes about News of the Air, her debut novel out from Black Lawrence Press.
If News of the Air were a boat, it would be a pontoon, a sturdy party barge with plenty of room for unsteady characters.
If it were a drink it would be a brandy old fashioned, served stronger than you expected, two cherries lolling.
And if it were a disaster it would be human-made.
If News of the Air were a party, it would be a summer cookout: hamburger patties and canoe paddles, the blue crackle of bug zapper.
If it were a lake it would lap, and if it were a teenaged girl it would snapchat.
If News of the Air were a garden, it would be in need of bees, and if it were a marriage there would be no end to its secrets.
If it knew about our past, it could tell us about our future.
If we were meant to last, we’d be different than all the other creatures.
Jill Stukenberg’s short stories have appeared in Midwestern Gothic, The Collagist (now The Rupture), Wisconsin People and Ideas magazine, and other literary magazines. She is a graduate of the MFA program at New Mexico State University and has received writing grants from the University of Wisconsin Colleges and has been awarded writing residencies at Shake Rag Alley and Write On, Door County. Jill is an Associate Professor of English at University of Wisconsin Stevens Point at Wausau. She grew up in Sturgeon Bay, Wisconsin, and previously taught in New Mexico and in the Pacific Northwest. She lives in Wausau with the poet Travis Brown and their child. Find her online at https://jillstukenberg.com and on Twitter at @jillstukenberg.
