"The Warbler School Chronicles" by Stephanie Barbé Hammer

An unnamed narrator attends an elite but perennially freezing private girls’ school in New York City during the 1960’s. At first almost invisible, she evolves from seven-year-old witness to fifteen-year-old actor as she navigates a Halloween party, observes a classmate’s sudden hair growth, and encounters two eccentric teachers. Zombies, fetal pigs, Shakespeare, and cigarettes make appearances in this linked set of flash fiction stories which weave in and out of magical realism and affirm the possibility of survival even under the most peculiar conditions.

Stephanie Barbé Hammer turns the strict, cloistered world of a private, all-girl school in New York on its head to make it dance for us. She elevates routine class activities into Aimee Bender-like magical epiphanies. The author is in total command, and can access the time in youth when a new friend might just save your lonely, starving life. The Warbler School Chronicles is lyrical, poetic, and at times, surreal.

—Max Talley, author of Peace, Love & Haight

Anyone who has ever felt like an outsider in their own life will relate to this book. Scratch that. Everyone will find something relatable, even if they never attended a fancy private school, contemplated a chair’s “chairness”, or admired someone’s floor-length hairpiece. As I read these vividly embodied stories, my own childhood couldn’t help but rise up like a zombie at recess. Shine up those saddle shoes. The Warbler School Chronicles will take you on a walk down memory lane.

—Cati Porter, author of Small Mammals and Novel

Stephanie Barbé Hammer's eleven stories of magical realism are brilliant bijou-parables: A girl—once invisible—when dressed as a boy, becomes visible. Obedience to rules—when exposed as arbitrary—reveals the role of language in defining reality. In "Risers" a stage curtain hides the memory of Anne Frank, the teenage Jewish diarist who was arrested by the Gestapo and died in the holocaust. Although written as fiction The Warbler School Chronicles are true postmodern masterpieces.

—Ben Stoltzfus, author of Romoland and The Nine Lives of Big JP

In this striking, perceptive, and incandescent flash fiction series, Stephanie Barbé Hammer beautifully illuminates the wonder and strangeness of youth and scales the vertiginous slopes of memory with great power and grace.

—Mary Otis, author of Burst

Stephanie Barbé Hammer

Stephanie Barbé Hammer is an award-winning novelist, short fiction writer, and poet. She has published work in a bunch of places including The Chiron Review, Phantom Drift, The RavensPerch, and Spillway. Her most recent novel is the Foreword Indie recognized magical realist mystery Journey to Merveilleux City (Picture Show Press). Her other titles for Bamboo Dart Press are City Slicker: encounters with the outside and Rescue Plan. A former New Yorker, Stephanie moved to California in 1986 and has (mostly) been there ever since. She lives in Santa Barbara with her husband, writer and political organizer Larry Behrendt. Learn more about Stephanie’s books and her creative writing classes at her website or follow her on Instagram.