The Bridge

"I was raised by three sisters, one a witch, one an assassin and the third just batshit crazy." And so begins The Bridge, from Shirley Jackson Award, Aurealis Award, Shadows Award, and Wonderland Award finalist, J.S. Breukelaar. Meera and her twin sister Kai are among thousands of hybrid women—called Mades—bred by the Father in his Blood Temple cult. Meera is rescued by a mysterious healer and storyteller, Narn, but her sister, Kai, does not survive the Father's "unmaking." Years later, when the cult is discovered and abolished, Meera, still racked with guilt and grief, enrolls in college to take advantage of the government's generous new Redress Program. There she can only dream of ever being real, of ever being whole again without her twin. When Narn's conjure stories buy Meera a free ride to a notorious horror reading series, she is soon the darling of the lit set, feted by the other students, finally whole, finally free of the idea that she should have died instead of her sister. But college is not all it seems—there is a price to pay for belonging to something that you don't understand. Narn has lost a sister too, and Meera agrees to try and find her if Narn will keep feed.

Booklist

“All 12 stories hit the same surreal nerve despite their sometimes vastly different plots, making the transition from one story to another feel like entering an entirely new world. The only predictable element is the collection’s overall strangeness, which is something that never gets old”

Locus Magazine, Paula Guran

“Collision: Stories, should be on your ‘must read’ list. Breukelaar, an American living in Sydney, Australia, writes in a clean, incisive style with razor-sharp opening hooks, while blending the literary, the speculative, and the weird”

or should

“Breukelaar tackles rejection and misunderstanding head-on by harnessing her wonderfully weird prose and creating an imaginarium from it, one that holds things you’ve never dreamt could

Brian Evenson, Shirley Jackson Award-winning author of Song for the Unraveling of the World

“A startlingly original novel that dizzyingly keeps erasing and redrawing the distinction between magic and science fiction as it takes apart what it means to belong or not belong. A story about reparations, necromancy, and college cliques, and about the way in which the world, in being made and remade, remains both incandescent and deadly.”

New York Journal of Books, Walker Townsend

“J. S. Breukelaar is a writer of obvious talent, demonstrated over and over in this collection”

Aurealis Magazine

“There’s an ethereal and dreamlike quality to Breukelaar’s prose that demands attention and reflection that keep the reader enthralled beyond the last page”

or don’t

“Stories that start in one place, and end

Stephen Graham Jones

“Collision shows J.S. Breukelaar’s range, from horror to fantasy to literary to science fiction and every emotional register between, but, after reading this collection, I’m not at all sure there’s any kind of limit to what she can get done on the page”

Angela Slatter, Award-winning author of Sourdough and Other Stories, Vigil, and Corpselight

“J.S. is leaving her footprints on a path blazed by luminaries such as M.R. James, Robert Aickman, Tanith Lee, Kelly Link, Charlotte Perkins Gillman, Jeff VanderMeer, Gustave Flaubert, Edgar Allan Poe, Daphne DuMaurier, Leonora Carrington and Charlotte Brontë, to name but a few”

John Langan, award-winning author of The Fisherman and House of Windows

“J.S. Breukelaar moves effortlessly among the varieties of the fantastic, shifting from horror, to science fiction, to fairy tale, sometimes within the same story. Combining gritty, lived-in settings with characters grooved and gouged by their experiences, these stories refract the complexities of contemporary existence, bringing our hopes and horrors to vivid life. Breukelaar’s work collides with the reader, opening us to terror, wonder, and insight”

About the Author

J.S. Breukelaar is the author of Collision: Stories, an Aurealis Award winner, a Shirley Jackson Award, Shadows Award, Norma K. Hemming Award, and Ditmar Award finalist; Aletheia, an Aurealis Award finalist; and American Monster, a Wonderland Award finalist. She has published stories, poems, and essays in publications such as Gamut, Black Static, Unnerving, Lightspeed, Lamplight, and elsewhere. She has a PhD in creative writing and film and is a columnist and regular instructor at LitReactor.com. California-born and New York raised, she currently lives in Sydney, Australia with her family where she teaches literature and writing at the University of Western Sydney. You can find her at www.thelivingsuitcase.com and on Twitter @jsbreukelaar.

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