Kodi Scheer, author of Incendiary Girls: Stories, on tour April 2014

Kodi Scheer’s debut story collection INCENDIARY GIRLS explores our baser instincts with vivid imagination and dark humor. With sharp and tender language, Scheer interrogates our expectations of reality, melding the surreal – visions of humans transforming into animals – with the emotions of everyday. In these stories, our bodies become strange and unfamiliar terrain, a medium for transformation. In “Fundamental Laws of Nature,” a doctor considers her legacy, both good and bad, when she discovers that her mother has been reincarnated as a thoroughbred mare. In the title story, a mischievous angel chronicles the remarkable life of a girl just beyond death’s reach.

 In Scheer’s hands, empathy and attachment are illuminated by the absurdity of life. Inspired by her studies in medicine and science, INCENDIARY GIRLS is a reflection of the power of healing, with all of its magical twists (and will remind readers of Karen Russell’s and Hannah Tinti’s stories). When our bodies betray us, when we begin to feel our minds slip, how much can we embrace without going insane? How much can we detach ourselves before losing our humanity? Scheer’s stories grapple with these questions in each throbbing, choking, heartbreaking moment.

“The story [When a Camel Breaks Your Heart] is bookended by a strange comedic twist. (‘Remember the good times,’ the narrator tells herself early on, ‘when Mahir was still human.’) But the bittersweet center of the story becomes even more affecting in the face of the poetic absurdity that undoes it.” — Liz Colville, San Francisco Chronicle review of When a Camel Breaks Your Heart

 Praise for INCENDIARY GIRLS

.“Scheer’s stories are astonishing and unforgettable. Incendiary Girls is the work of a crafts­woman and a visionary and simply one of the best storytellers I’ve encountered in a long time.” — Laura Kasischke, author of The Raising and The Life Before Her Eyes

. “A beautiful, beguil­ing… and slyly unsettling collection.” —Peter Ho Davies, author of The Welsh Girl