You Were Watching from the Sand
by Juliana Lamy
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Pub Date Sep 19 2023 | Archive Date Jan 09 2024
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Description
Playful, kinetic, and devastating in turn, You Were Watching from the Sand is a collection in which Haitian men, women, and children who find their lives cleaved by the interminably strange bite back at the bizarre with their own oddities. In “belly,” a young woman abandoned by her only living relative makes a person from the mud beside her backyard creek. In “We Feel it in Punta Cana,” a domestic child servant in the Dominican Republic tours through his own lush imagination to make his material conditions more bearable. In “The Oldest Sensation is Anger,” a teenager invites a same-aged family friend into her apartment and uncovers a spate of disturbing secrets about her. Written in a mixture of high lyricism, absurdist comedy, and Haitian cultural witticisms, this is a collection whose dynamism matches that of its characters at every beat and turn.
Advance Praise
"Every sentence Juliana Lamy writes is like a match being struck. Not many authors debut with her clarity of vision, inventiveness, and verbal agility, and I would wager almost anything that You Were Watching from the Sand will mark only the first chapter in an important body of work."—Kevin Brockmeier, author of The Ghost Variations: One Hundred Stories
Marketing Plan
Marketing: Pre-pub buzz-building campaign
- Online marketing
- Social media campaign
- Targeted email marketing
- Community outreach
- Text-generated flash fiction campaign ahead of launch
- e-newsletters and websites
- Book club outreach
- Library outreach
- Course adoptions
Publicity:
- Media attention
- Online review and feature attention
- Local author promotion: Iowa City, IA; Boston, MA; Boynton Beach, FL
- Social Media Campaign
- Book & author festival outreach
Social Media:
Twitter: @JulianaLamy
Anticipated Review List:
LitHub, Kirkus Reviews, Los Angeles Review of Books, New York Review of Books, IndependentBookReview.com, The Oxford American, Boston Review, Harvard Magazine, Publisher’s Weekly, Electric Literature, Split Lip Magazine, Guernica Magazine, The Rumpus, Kenyon Review, Ploughshares, The Cut
Anticipated Book Tour:
Boynton Beach, Delray Beach, West Palm Beach, Boca Raton, Fort Lauderdale, Coral Springs, Miami, Cambridge, Boston, Brookline, Somerville, Iowa City
Footprint Cities:
Iowa City, Cambridge, Boston, Boynton Beach, Boca Raton, Delray Beach
Available Editions
| EDITION | Other Format |
| ISBN | 9781636281056 |
| PRICE | $16.95 (USD) |
| PAGES | 176 |
Links
Available on NetGalley
Featured Reviews
Reviewer 954661
This was a fantastic collection of short stories. Each one stood on their own, yet they all felt familiar.
The conciseness with which the author draws emotion and created tension is amazing.
Lamy is definitely an author I’m eager to read more from.
Emma U, Reviewer
You Were Watching from the Sand is a beautiful debut short story collection from Juliana Lamy. The 12 stories included in this collection span a variety of places and themes, centering lives of Haitian individuals and members of the Haitian diaspora in the United States. Lamy’s characters and stories investigate relationships and identity in ways that are both incredibly real and magical, blending contemporary life with Haitian story and magical realism.
I adored this collection, and am so impressed that this is Lamy’s debut work as a published author. Her prose absolutely shines, elevating even the most simple of moments. I found myself drawn into the world of these characters so quickly, which is such a necessary skill as a short fiction writer. I particularly enjoyed Lamy’s ability to create atmosphere and intense imagery without giving the prose an overwritten or overly dense feel. Many of these stories deal with motherhood, family dynamics, queer identity, and youth in ways that feel familiar but fresh in their nuance and cultural context.
Every character in these stories felt very real to me, with complex stories and identities that clearly predate and continue beyond the stories that are presented here. I really liked this aspect of this collection—while each story felt contained and satisfying at its conclusion, you are also left with the impression these lives will continue, unknown to us. It gave the collection a very transient, human feel.
This is absolutely a collection that I would recommend to readers of contemporary literary fiction and magical realism, especially if you are looking for stories that focus on queer identity and femininity beyond the most prevalent white, middle-class perspective. I will definitely be looking out for Lamy’s next book.
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