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About the Author
Shannon McLeod is the author of the novella, Whimsy (Long Day Press, 2021). Her writing has appeared in Tin House, Prairie Schooner, Hobart, and SmokeLong Quarterly, among other publications, and has been nominated for Best Small Fictions, Best of the Net, and featured in Wigleaf Top 50. Born in Detroit, she now lives in central Virginia. You can find Shannon on her website at www.shannon-mcleod.com
Reviews
“Shannon McLeod’s Nature Trail Stories is as much about nature trails as the craving for deeper connection and meaning that leads us out into the woods. With equal parts humor and melancholy, McLeod introduces us to a cast of quirky, nuanced, and heartbreakingly vivid characters whose looping paths and chance encounters invite them to confront their traumas and imagine new possibilities. Both subtle and expansive, this collection reminds us that fiction, like a nature trail, can help us feel less alone.”
—Rebecca van Laer, author of How to Adjust to the Dark
“In Nature Trail Stories, Shannon McLeod's characters tenderly negotiate their private lives and their public lives with others and in nature. She depicts responsible, helpful citizens doing their best within the dynamics of family, friendships, and community. Nature is more than simply a setting in this book---it is a character that offers possibility. Nature Trail Stories is bursting with heart and well-crafted sentences. McLeod's sharp observations make for clever, enjoyable reading that will make you chuckle. The book ends beautifully with "Easier to Convince," a page-turning novella about youth, choices, and self-discovery. Readers familiar with her previous book Whimsy will fall in love with her mastery of the novella form all over again.”
—Ursula Villarreal-Moura, author of Math for the Self-Crippling
“Shannon McLeod’s Nature Trail Stories are beautiful, funny, warm-hearted, and weird, focusing on the ambiguity of where “nature” ends and “humanity” begins.”
— Juliet Escoria, author of Juliet the Maniac
“You can almost feel the leaves crunching beneath your feet in this evocative collection of Nature Trail Stories. McLeod captures the way public spaces of contemplation are experienced differently depending on one's privileges, circumstances, and perceptions. For anyone who's ever felt an attachment to a trail, or worried about walking alone, or had an illicit encounter in a dark corner, this is for you. This story collection and its characters are diverse, but McLeod's incisive attention to their inner life and compassionate sensitivity as a writer unites them.”
—Rachel Krantz, author of Open: an Uncensored Memoir of Love, Liberation, and Non-Monogamy
