It makes perfect sense that Genevieve Hudson’s fierce collection of short stories, Pretend We Live Here, found a home at Future Tense Books. Previous releases from the Portland small press (like Wish You Were Me by Myriam Gurba and Excavation by Wendy C. Ortiz) indicate that editor and publisher Kevin Sampsell takes pride in publishing works that offer a sideways perspective. Hudson’s stories are of the same mold, and she reveals that even familiar objects and scenarios have strange, dark-sided contours.
The collected worlds of Pretend We Live Here prove how rare it is for queerness, rather than straightness, to be taken for granted as the accepted norm. Several of the collection’s stand-out stories center on coming-of-age experience, which is ripe terrain for Hudson. Hudson is a writer with a deep investment in exploring the ways our bodies shape a sense of who we are and how we try to shape our bodies to better align with what we want to be.