Magdalena Is Brighter than You Think

Inventive and emotionally nuanced, Grace Spulak’s debut story collection explores the complexities of gender, queerness, trauma, and resilience through characters who live in the margins and imagine new ways to survive there.

Pushing the boundaries of traditional narratives and forms, these stories suggest paths for picking up our pieces-and for transforming and escaping the realities that constrain us. A social worker becomes entangled in the life of a woman she’s meant to investigate, blurring the line between empathy and obsession. A veterinary student communes with a yak that seems to speak to her-if only she could understand its message. And a separating couple embarks on one last errand together to unburden themselves of an unsettling memento.

Backgrounded by the New Mexico landscape-a place of isolation, strange beauty, and potential transformation-this collection offers unexpected flashes of grace and hope.

Author Biography

Grace Spulak is a writer and attorney based in her home state of New Mexico. She holds an MFA from the Warren Wilson Program for Writers and a JD from Harvard Law School. Her work was awarded Witness Magazine’s 2021 Literary Award in Fiction and has appeared in the Ploughshares blog, Nimrod International Journal, and Southwest Review, among others, and her work has received support from Trillium Arts and New Mexico Writers.