The Understudy (Novel), Phoenix, AZ
The Understudy, a bildungsroman, follows Norwegian teen Matty Johansen as he moves between cities and countries in an attempt to make sense of the suicide of his father, a botanist and stage magician.
“My work seeks to “imaginatively toil” outside of the veil of consensus reality, reorienting traditional narrative conventions and interrogating cultural images of melancholy and disability.”
A fictionist and poet from Arizona, Caroline Schmidt is a graduate of Emory University and the Rutgers University-Newark MFA program, where she studied fiction and taught undergraduate creative writing. She has received awards and fellowships from the Beinecke Foundation, the Vermont Studio Center, and the Bucknell University Stadler Center for Poetry. Her work is published or forthcoming in American Short Fiction, Colorado Review, Palette Poetry, and Southern Humanities Review, among others. Her story “Particular Luck” was selected by R.O. Kwon as the winner of the 2021 Halifax Ranch Fiction Prize.
Visit Caroline’s website, at caroline-schmidt.com