Michele Finn Johnson's short fiction and essays have appeared in
Colorado Review, Mid-American Review, DIAGRAM, SmokeLong Quarterly,
A Public Space, Moon City Review, and elsewhere. Her work was
selected for the 2019 Best Small Fictions anthology, won an AWP
Intro Journals Award in nonfiction, and has been nominated several
times for the Pushcart Prize, Best of the Net, and Best
Microfiction anthologies. A native of Philadelphia, she received
her B.ChE. and M.S. degrees in engineering from Villanova
University. She serves as contributing editor at Split Lip
Magazine. She lives in Tucson, Arizona, with her husband and owns
an environmental-strategy consulting firm. Find her online at
michelefinnjohnson.com.
"Development Times Vary is a rich and layered collection of stories
by one of my favorite writers on the planet. Here, we're treated to
the full range of Michele Finn Johnson's mastery, to stories full
of heart and wit and insight. These stories feature an array of
characters at various stages of life, navigating the glories and
devastations of girlhood and womanhood and all brought to vivid,
crackling life via Johnson's indelible voice and assured pen. How
lucky we are to have such a stunning writer in our midst, to have
all these brilliant stories in one place."
--Kathy Fish, author of Wild Life: Collected Works
"Development Times Vary serves up a brew of playfulness and
consequence, of innocence and wisdom and sass. Whether a Catholic
school girl lost in the shuffle of adolescence, a boy haunted by
the bat-ghost of his dead twin, or a fruit-fly-breeding pothead
obsessed with a popular jock, Michele Finn Johnson's characters
search, struggle, make mistakes, and often learn more than they
want to know. Bursting with Johnson's inimitable voice, these
stories shimmer and sting."
--Jennifer Wortman, author of This. This. This. Is. Love. Love.
Love.
"'Things don't ever straighten themselves up on their own, '
Michele Finn Johnson writes in her hilarious and heart-felt debut
collection, Development Times Vary. These are East Coast and West
Coast stories, innovative flash and windy trips down memory lane;
they explode with lines like 'The night I stole Baby Jesus it was
fucking freezing'; no matter the structure or size, they are pitch
perfect studies in comedic timing, startling meditations on faith
and ache and want and family, dynamic shimmers of truth; they are
love stories, every last one of them."
--Sara Lippmann, author of Doll Palace, Lech, and Jerks
"By turns tender, quiet, and astonishing, Development Times Vary
contains deeply resonant tales of unraveling connections. Whether
it is 'School Lessons' chirping with dolphin shouts, paper football
and learning cultures, or 'Lunar Facts, ' a list-style exploration
of the layers that are at times bright then waning, cyclical like
the moon, Michele Finn Johnson is an author of singular voice and
vivid imagination. She paints a world of characters in a small
space and masterfully connects the dots between the loving and the
broken in her captivating debut collection."
--Tara Isabel Zambrano, author of Death, Desire, and Other
Destinations
"How can one writer have so many strange and wonderful stories
living in her head? Defies the laws of physics. Development Times
Vary is at times funny, at times deeply moving, consistently
startling. You'll love living in Michele Finn Johnson's brain."
--William Haywood Henderson, award-winning author of Augusta
Locke
"In Development Times Vary, Michele Finn Johnson delivers short
stories that will stick with you for a long time. There are moments
of absurdity, moments of heartbreak, moments of revelation, and
more than a few bats, but what makes these stories really special
are the characters, each with a unique and memorable voice. This is
a collection that excavates the human experience and finds hope
nestled against despair, humor hiding beneath rage, heroism wrapped
up in self-doubt, and love sharing space with grief. Johnson is a
master of short fiction, and I can't wait to see what she writes
next."
--Tiffany Quay Tyson, author of The Past is Never and Three
Rivers
"Michele Finn Johnson's stories are populated with Catholic school
girls and awkward baseball players, hot ghosts and cold angels,
thirsty girls, harried parents, and dead twins with batwings. Her
characters are voracious, sardonic, full of longing. Reading this
book feels like watching a talented magician perform a series of
dazzling tricks. Development Times Vary is a wild, nimble, playful,
and moving book, charting, as the title promises, the unpredictable
and uneven ways people, feelings, and revelations grow."
--Kim Magowan, author of Undoing, The Light Source, and How Far
I've Come
"Sharply observant children who see the people in their orbit with
a bird's-eye view; teenagers who ache to be seen; lessons about
ants, bats, and lunar facts; dead who tend the living; a slew of
shitty boyfriends; and lust, lust, lust: These are a few of the
ingredients of which Michele Finn Johnson's Development Times Vary
is made. Wise and poignant and companionable, these are stories I
wish I could send as love letters to my thirteen-year-old self and,
well, my twenty-something and thirty-something selves too."
--Michelle Ross, author of They Kept Running
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