CROWN
A Southern Gothic literary collection for readers who grew up between Flannery O'Connor and Colson Whitehead, who remember the long summers of Stand By Me and Now and Then, and who know that the most haunting thing about childhood isn't the dark, but the moment you realize you've always been standing in it.
Crown is a 10-part short story series following Z, a girl coming of age between the suburbs and backroads, Houston and Barrett Station, the world she was born into and the ones she keeps reaching toward. Across ten stories that move from the hazy intimacy of childhood into the sharper, stranger terrain of adolescence and early adulthood, Z navigates the borders between race, class, and belief, learning that belonging is rarely simple.
A blend of food, violence, spirituality, and the simmering unease of the American South, Crown is a story about what gets passed down and what you choose to carry for yourself. While the stories are interconnected, they can be read standalone or in any order you choose.
all 10 stories are available at the links below
0. An Introduction to Crown
0. An Introduction to Crown
The background and inspiration for this series.
1. Akademos
0. An Introduction to Crown
A story of family, faith, and the things we set on fire to belong.
2. Crown
3. Oxtails
A child learns how crowns are earned and what it costs to wear them.
3. Oxtails
3. Oxtails
A funeral, a fistful of candy, and the dangerous things girls learn after dark.
4. Ham Hocks
Three cousins, one pig, and an extremely bad idea.
5. Juice
A story about appetite—and who actually has to pay for it.
6. Ash
Two girls test how far devotion, jealousy, and love can be pushed before the body breaks.
7. Dock of the Bay
A story about the way we miss each other while doing our best to survive.
8. Good Friday
8. Good Friday
Z comes home expecting food and forgiveness. Her cousins have other plans...
9. Fat Tuesday
9. Fat Tuesday
8. Good Friday
While grief makes some of us reckless, it makes others brave.
10. Roux
9. Fat Tuesday
10. Roux
The last story in Crown. A homecoming.