London-raised Julie Esther Fisher has published stories and poetry in Alaska Quarterly Review, Chicago Quarterly Review, Waxwing, The Citron Review, On the Seawall, and many other places. Winner of several awards, including Grand Prize Recipient of the Stories That Need to be Told Anthology, and Sunspot Lit’s Rigel Award, she has been shortlisted in numerous other contests and received multiple Best of the Net and Pushcart nominations. Her poetry chapbook, On the Lip of Night, is forthcoming from Finishing Line Press. A grateful recipient of a Massachusetts Cultural Council grant, she is privileged to live today on acres of pristine wilderness in the western part of the state, where she designs gardens and draws endless inspiration from nature.

The nine interconnected stories in A Pearl Is Just an Accident explore the breaches of connection and identity through the eyes of an American family living in both the US and the UK. Cultural and personal dislocations entwine with redemptive acts of love and rebellion. With a lyrical and deeply human approach, the stories pry open from the chest of secrets old wounds, counterbalancing these with the forces that heal: art, nature, and the redemptive power of abiding connection. Written through the eyes of characters who find refuge in the odd, the obsessive, in magic and beauty, A Pearl Is Just an Accident journeys into the world—at times the underworld—of family, trauma, grief, and recovery. Art Conservator, daughter, sister: with lyricism, even humor, Fisher probes the nuances of these roles, evoking their sometimes silent, sometimes clamorous ruptures, their singular hauntings and simmering legacies. She wrote A Pearl Is Just an Accident to put to good use trauma’s rich legacy in the hopes of moving readers and helping them feel less alone in the world.