I Meant It Once

has been published in No Tokens, Electric Literature, A Public Space, Split Lip, Wigleaf, and other publications. Originally from New England, she is a former bookseller and a 2021 A Public Space Writing Fellow. She has lived in New York City, Amsterdam, and Ithaca, New York.

is the author of the interlinked story collection You Never Get It Back, awarded the John Simmons Short Fiction Prize, judged by Brandon Taylor, and named a New York Times Editors’ Choice. It was shortlisted for the Mary McCarthy Prize and longlisted for the Story Prize. Over twenty-five of her stories appear in magazines such as Granta, the Kenyon Review, and American Short Fiction, and she is the recipient of the Kenyon Review Short Fiction Prize, the Missouri Review Peden Prize, and the Meringoff Prize in Fiction. She is an associate professor at Seton Hall University.

This sharp and original debut collection captures precisely that time of life when so many young women are caught in between, preoccupied by nostalgia for past relationships—with friends, roommates, siblings—while trying to move forward into an uncertain future. Throughout, in stories both lyrical and haunting, young women search for ways to break free from the expectations of others and find a way to be in the world. I Meant It Once is a luminous and witty collective portrait of young women on the cusp of becoming.