“Véronique Darwin’s Mom Camp is a generous exploration of womanhood in its many forms. Its stories—about everything from deep platonic friendships to the intricacies of parenting with a partner—are deeply strange, well-observed, and often laugh-out-loud funny. A remarkable debut from a writer to watch.”—Gabrielle Drolet, author of Look Ma, No Hands
“Véronique Darwin’s kaleidoscopic debut collection of stories shimmers with tenderness and comic grace. With clear-eyed precision and a taste for the absurd dressed up in plain clothes, Mom Camp’s dynamic cast of female leads bubbles over with funny, earnest questions about what it means to live each day in search of one’s truest self. Part fantasy dollhouse, part summer camp romp, part expansive blackbox theatre experiment—Darwin has created here something deeply courageous and loving. These stories are wiser than they know.”—Jacquelyn Zong-Li Ross, author of The Longest Way to Eat a Melon
“With playfulness and sparkling wit, Mom Camp stages investigations into identity and intimacy. In these stories, women gather—at camp, at a monastery retreat, in an art class—to parse who they are and where they belong. These are fictions of containment and eruption, where labels miss the mark, narratives grow holes, and forms are made to be broken. In this confident debut, Véronique Darwin locates magic in the messy particulars of existence; Mom Camp is a work of keen perception and vitality.”—Marisa Grizenko, author of the Plain Pleasures newsletter
“‘Mom Camp’ is a surprising and moving, smartly cinematic story. Enigmatic in all the right places, it is delivered in a voice both wry and wise. Memorable.”—Canisia Lubrin, judge of the Austin Clarke Prize in Literary Excellence, on the story “Mom Camp”