Place Published: Braddock, PA
Publisher: Braddock Avenue Books
Date Published: 2026
ISBN: 9798218692179

Synopsis:

Jennifer Murvin’s debut story collection, Real California Living, is an exhilarating mix of flash and more traditional-length stories that dramatize the vicissitudes of not only life in California, but also of the way its culture often acts as a crucible for so much of American life. In “Pentimenti,” years after an affair, a California couple’s teenage daughter is sent to Missouri to be cared for by the husband’s former lover while he recovers from cancer. Is it a chance for grace or an unmitigated disaster? “Come In, Come In,” follows an intimate conversation between a professional housekeeper and her new client, a moment of unexpected connection that reveals how grief knows none of the boundaries—religion, ethnicity, or social class—we try to place around our lives. And in “What Does It Say About You” a visit to a nail salon for a childless woman in her fifties offers a potentially dangerous opportunity for her to compare and perhaps reconsider all the lives that a woman might live with the one she has chosen. Sometimes with deep empathy, other times with a clear-eyed cruelty, Jennifer Murvin reveals the lives of her characters in language so dynamic it will take your breath away. These are stories not to be missed. 

Praise for Real California Living:

Forthcoming


Author bio:

Jennifer Murvin is the author of the fiction chapbook She Says (Small Harbor Publishing) and graphic essay chapbook False Alarm (GreenTower Press). Her essays, stories, and graphic narrative have appeared in Fourth Genre (Winner of the Multimedia Essay Prize), CRAFT, Hayden’s Ferry Review, Longleaf Review, the anthology And If That Mockingbird Don’t Sing: Parenting Stories Gone Speculative (Alternating Current Press), River Styx, The Southampton Review, The Pinch, december magazine, DIAGRAM, The Florida Review, Catamaran Literary Reader, Indiana Review, CutBank, Post Road, American Short Fiction (Winner of the American Short(er) Fiction Contest), Phoebe, The Sun, Mid-American Review, Cincinnati Review, and other literary journals. Jen is an Associate Professor of English at Missouri State University and a faculty member at the Solstice Low-Residency MFA in Creative Writing at Lasell University. She teaches for the nonprofit community writing workshop River Pretty Writers Retreat held twice annually in Tecumseh, Missouri. Jen holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Pacific University in Forest Grove, Oregon.